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A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 




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A FRENCHMAN 

E : 

IN AMERICA 



^lejcolUjctions uf pXjen and ^tiinss 



>o».-j»-. • 



BY ^.j 

MAX O'RELL •^~ ^ 

AUTHOR OF "JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT," "JOHN BULL, JUNIOR,"., 
"JACQUES BONHOMME," "JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND," ETC. 



WITH OVER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS 
BY E. IV. KEMBLE 



NEW YORK 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue 



t'\ 



9, 



gfe» 



Copyright, iSgi, by 
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 

All rights reserved. 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRE9S, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. — Departure — The Atlantic — Demoralization of the " Boarders" — 

Betting — The Auctioneer — An Inquisitive Yankee, . i 

II. — Arrival of the Pilot — First Look at American Newspapers, ir 

III. — Arrival — The Custom House — Things Look Bad — The Inter- 
viewers — First Visits — Things Look Brighter — " O Vanity 
of Vanities," . . . . . . . . .14 

IV. — Impressions of American Hotels, ...... 25 

V. — My Opening Lecture — Reflections on Audiences I Have 
Had — The Man who Won't Smile — The One who Laughs 
too Soon, and Many Others, ...... 37 

VI. — A Connecticut Audience — Merry Meriden — A Hard Pull, . 48 

VII.— A Tempting Offer— The Thursday Club— Bill Nye— Visit to 

Y*ung Ladies' Schools — The Players' Club, . . - 52 

VIII. — The Flourishing of Coats-of-Arms in America — Reflections 
Thereon — Forefathers Made to Order — The Phonograph at 
Home — The Wealth of New York — Departure for Buffalo, . 60 

IX. — Different Ways of Advertising a Lecture — American Impres- 

sarios and Their Methods, ....... 66 

X. — Buffalo — The Niagara Falls — A Frost — Rochester to the 
Rescue of Buffalo — Cleveland — I Meet Jonathan — Phantas- 
magoria, .......... 74 

XI. — A Great Admirer — Notes on Railway Traveling — Is America 

a Free Nation ? — A Pleasant Evening in New York, . . 8i 

XII. — Notes on American Women — Comparisons — How Men 

Treat Women and Vice Versa — Scenes and Illustrations, . 90 



Vlil CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

XIII. — More about Journalism in America — A Dinner at Delmoni- 

co's — My First Appearance in an American Church, . . iio 

XIV. — Marcus Aurelius in America — Chairmen I Have Had — 
American, English, and Scotch Chairmen — One who had 
Been to Boulogne — Talkative and Silent Chairmen — A Try- 
ing Occasion — The Lord is Asked to Allow the Audience to 
See my Points, ......... 124 

XV. — Reflections on the Typical American, ..... 137 

XVI. — I am Asked to Express Myself Freely on America — I Meet 
Mrs. Blank and for the First Time Hear of Mr. Blank — 
Beacon Street Society — The Boston Clubs, .... 149 

XVII. — A Lively Sunday in Boston — Lecture in the Boston Thea- 
ter — Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes — The Booth-Modjeska 
Combination, . . . . . . . . .156 

XVIII. — St. Johnsbury — The State of Maine — New England Self- 
control — Cold Climates and Frigid Audiences — Where is the 
Audience ? — All Drunk ! — A Reminiscence of a Scotch Audi- 
ence on a Saturday Night, ....... 163 

XIX. — A Lovely Ride to Canada — Quebec, a Corner of Old France 
Strayed up and Lost in the Snow — The French Canadians — 
The Parties in Canada — Will the Canadians become Yankees? 172 

XX. — Montreal — The City — Mount Royal — Canadian Sports — 

Ottawa — The Government — Rideau Hall, . . . 182 

XXI. — Toronto — The City — The Ladies — The Sports — Strange 

Contrasts — The Canadian Schools, ..... 191 

XXII. — West Canada — Relations between British and Indians — 
Return to the United States — ^Difficulties in the Way — En- 
counter with an American Custom-House Officer, . . 196 

XXIII. — Chicago (First Visit) — The " Neighborhood " of Chicago 
— The History of Chicago — Public Servants — A Very Deaf 
Man, 203 

XXIV. -^St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Sister Cities — Rivalries and 
Jealousies between Large American Cities — Minnehaha Falls 
— Wonderful Interviewers — My Hat gets into Trouble Again 
— Electricity in the Air — Forest Advertisements — Railway 
Speed in America, ........ 214 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

XXV. — Detroit — The Town— The Detroit " Free Press " — A Lady 
Interviewer — The " Unco Guid " in Detroit — Reflections on 
the Anglo-Saxon " Unco Guid," 222 

XXVI.— Milwaukee— A Well-filled Day— Reflections on the Scotch 

in America — Chicago Criticisms, 236 

XXVII.— The Monotony of Traveling in the States — " Manon 

Lescaut " in America, ........ 244 

XXVIII. — For the First Time I See an American Paper Abuse Me 
— Albany to New York— A Lecture at Daly's Theater — 
Afternoon Audiences, ........ 248 

XXIX. — Wanderings Through New York — Lecture at the Har- 
monic Club — Visit to the Century Club 255 

XXX. — Visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music — Rev. Dr. Tal- 

mage, .....••.••• 257 

XXXI.— Virginia— The Hotels— The South— I will Kill a Railway 
Conductor before I Leave America — Philadelphia — Impres- 
sions of the Old City, . . . . . . .263 

XXXII. — My Ideas of the State of Texas— Why I will not Go 

There — The Story of a Frontier Man 274 

XXXIII.— Cincinnati— The Town— The Suburbs— A German City 
— "Over the Rhine" — What is a Good Patriot? — An Im- 
pressive Funeral — A^Great Fire — How It Appeared to Me, 
and How It Appeared to the Newspaper Reporters, .279 

XXXIV. — A Journey if you Like — Terrible Encounter with an 

American Interviewer, ....... 296 

XXXV. — The University of Indiana — Indianapolis— The Veterans 
of the Grand Army of the Republic on the Spree— A Marvel- 
ous Equilibrist, .....•••■ 3o6 

XXXVL— Chicago (Second Visit)— Vassili Verestchagin's Exhibi- 
tion — The ' ' Angelus " — Wagner and Wagnerites — Wander- 
ings About the Big City — I Sit on the Tribunal, . . . "iw 

XXXVII. — Ann Arbor— The University of Michigan— Detroit 
Again— The French Out of France— Oberlin College, Ohio- 
Black and White— Are All American Citizens Equal ? . .322 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

XXXVIII. — Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in New York — Joseph Jefferson 
— Julian Hawthorne — Miss Ada Rehan — "As You Like It " 
at Daly's Theater, ........ 330 

XXXIX.— Washington— The City— Willard's Hotel— The Politi- 
cians — General Benjamin Harrison, U. S. President — Wash- 
ington Society — Baltimore — Philadelphia, .... 332 

XL. — Easter Sunday in New York, ...... 342 

XLI. — I Mount the Pulpit and Preach on the Sabbath, in the State 
of Wisconsin — The Audience is Large and Appreciative; but 
I Probably Fail to Please One of the Congregation, . . 347 

XLII. — The Origin of American Humor and Its Characteristics — 
The Sacred and the Profane — The Germans and American 
Humor — My Corpse Would " Draw," in my Impressario's 
Opinion, 353 

XLIII. — Good-by to America — Not "Adieu," but "Au Revoir " — 

On Board the Teutonic — Home Again, .... 361 



A Frenchman in America. 



CHAPTER I. 

Departure— The Atlantic — Demoralization of 
THE "Boarders" — Betting — The Auctioneer 
— An Inquisitive Yankee. 



Oil board the " Celtic,'' Christmas Week, 1889. 

IN the order of things the Teutonic was to have 
sailed to-day, but the date is the 25th of Decem- 
ber, and few people elect to eat their Christmas din- 
ner on the ocean if they can avoid it ; so there are only 
twenty-five saloon passengers, and they have been com- 
mitted to the brave little Celtic, while that huge float- 
ing palace, the Teutonic, remains in harbor. 

Little Celtic ! Has it come to this with her and her 
companions, the Germanic, the Britannic, and the rest 
that were the wonders and the glory of the ship-build- 
ing craft a few years ago ? There is something almost 
sad in seeing these queens of the Atlantic dethroned, 
and obliged to rank below newer and grander ships. 
It was even pathetic to hear the remarks of the sailors, 
as we passed the Germanic who, in her day, had 



2 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

created even more wondering admiration than the two 
famous armed cruisers lately added to the " White 
Star" fleet. 



I know nothing more monotonous than a voyage 
from Liverpool to New York. 

Nine times out of ten — not to say ninety-nine times 
out of a hundred — the passage is bad. The Atlantic 
Ocean has an ugly temper ; it has forever got its back 
up. Sulky, angry, and terrible by turns, it only takes 
a few days' rest out of every year, and this always oc- 
curs when you are not crossing. 

And then, the wind is invariably against you. 
When you go to America, it blows from the west ; 
when you come back to Europe, it blows from the east. 
If the captain steers south to avoid icebergs, it is sure 
to begin to blow southerly. 

Doctors say that sea-sickness emanates from the brain, 
I can quite believe them. The blood rushes to your 
head, leaving your extremities cold and helpless. All 
the vital force flies to the brain, and your legs refuse 
to carry you. It is with sea-sickness as it is with wine. 
When people say that a certain wine goes up in the 
head, it means that it is more likely to go down to the 
feet. 

There you are, on board a huge construction that 
rears and kicks like a buck-jumper. She lifts you up 
bodily, and, after well shaking all your members in the 
air several seconds, lets them down higgledy-piggledy, 
leaving to Providence the business of picking them up 
and putting them together again. That is the kind of 




"your legs refuse to carry you. 



4 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

thing one has to go through about sixty times an hour. 
And there is no hope for you ; nobody dies of it. 

Under such conditions, the mental state of the board- 
ers may easily be imagined. They smoke, they play 
cards, they pace the deck like bruin pacing a cage ; or 
else they read, and forget at the second chapter all they 
have read in the first. A few presumptuous ones try 
to think, but without success. The ladies, the Ameri- 
can ones more especially, lie on their deck chairs 
swathed in rugs and shawls like Egyptian mummies in 
their sarcophagi, and there they pass from ten to 
twelve hours a day motionless, hopeless, helpless, 
speechless. Some few incurables keep to their cabins 
altogether, and only show their wasted faces when it is 
time to debark. Up they come, with cross, stupefied, 
pallid, yellow-green-looking physiognomies, and seem- 
ing to say : " Speak to me, if you like, but don't ex- 
pect me to open my eyes or answer you, and above all, 
don't shake me." 

Impossible to fraternize. 

The crossing now takes about six days and a half. 
By the time you have spent two in getting your sea 
legs on, and three more in reviewing, and being re- 
viewed by your fellow-passengers, you will find your- 
self at the end of your troubles — and your voyage. 

No, people do not fraternize on board ship, during 
such a short passage, unless a rumor runs from cabin 
to cabin that there has been some accident to the ma- 
chinery, or that the boat is in imminent danger. At the 
least scare of this kind, every one looks at his neigh- 
bor with eyes that are alarmed, but amiable, nay, even 
amicable. But as soon as one can say : " We have 



A FRENCHMAN- IN AMERICA'. S 

come off with a mere scare this time," all the facial 
traits stiffen once more, and nobody knows anybody. 
Universal grief only will bring about universal 
brotherhood. We must wait till the Day of Judg- 
ment. When the world is passing away, oh ! how 
men will forgive and love one another! What 




"like EGYPTIAN MUMMIES." 



outpourings of good-will and affection there will 
be ! How touching, how edifying will be the sight ! 
The universal republic will be founded in the 
twinkling of an eye, distinctions of creed and 
class forgotten. The author will embrace the 
critic and even the publisher, the socialist open 



6 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

his arms to the capitalist. The married men will be 
seen " making it up " with their mothers-in-law, beg- 
ging them to forgive and forget, and admitting that 
they had not been always quite so-so, in fact, as they 
might have been. If the Creator of all is a philoso- 
pher, or enjoys humor, how he will be amused to 
see all the various sects of Christians, who have passed 
their lives in running one another down, throw them- 
selves into one another's arms. It will be a scene 
never to be forgotten. 

Yes, I repeat it, the voyage from Liverpool to New 
York is monotonous and wearisome in the extreme. 
It is an interval in one's existence, a week more or 
less lost, decidedly more than less. 

One grows gelatinous from head to foot, especially 
in the upper part of one's anatomy. 

In order to see to what an extent the brain softens, 
you only need look at the pastimes the poor pas- 
sengers go in for. 

A state of demoralization prevails throughout. 

They bet. That is the form the disease takes. 

They bet on anything and everything. They bet 
that the sun will or will not appear next day at eleven 
precisely, or that rain will fall at noon. They bet that 
the number of miles made by the boat at twelve o'clock 
next day will terminate with o, 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 
9. Each draws one of these numbers and pays his 
shilling, half-crown, or even sovereign. Then these 
numbers are put up at auction. An improvised 
auctioneer, with the gift of the gab, puts his talent at 
the service of his fellow-passengers. It is really very 
funny to see him swaying about the smoking-room 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 7 

table, and using all his eloquence over each nunnber in 
turn for sale. A good auctioneer will run the bidding 
so smartly that the winner of the pool next day often 
pockets as much as thirty and forty pounds. On the 




THE AUCTIONEER. 



eve of arrival in New York harbor, everybody knows 
that twenty-four pilots are waiting about for the advent 
of the liner, and that each boat carries her number on 
her sail. Accordingly, twenty-four numbers are rolled 



8 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

up and thrown into a cap, and betting begins again. 
He who has drawn the number which happens to be 
that of the pilet who takes the steamer into harbor 
pockets the pool. 

I, who have never bet on anything in my h'fe, even bet 
with my traveling companion, when the rolling of the 
ship sends our portmanteaus from one side of the 
cabin to the other, that mine will arrive first. Intel- 
lectual faculties on board are reduced to this ebb. 

The nearest approach to a gay note, in this concert 
of groans and grumblings, is struck by some humorous 
and good-tempered American. He will come and ask 
you the most impossible questions with an ease and 
impudence perfectly inimitable. These catechisings 
are all the more droll because they are done with a 
naivete vj\\\zh. completely disarms you. The phrase is 
short, without verb, reduced to its most concise ex- 
pression. The intonation alone marks the interroga- 
tion. Here is a specimen. 

We have on board the Celtic an American who is not 
a very shrewd person, for it has actually taken him 
five days to discover that English is not my native 
tongue. This morning (December 30) he found it out, 
and, being seated near me in the smoke-room, has just 
had the following bit of conversation with me: 

"Foreigner?" said he. 

" Foreigner," said I, replying in American. 

" German, I guess." 

" Guess again." 

" French ? " 

" Pure blood." 




"going to AMERICA?' 



lO A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" Married ?" 

" Married." 

" Going to America ? " 

" Yes — evidently." 

" Pleasure trip ? " 

" No." 

" On business ? " 

" On business, yes." 

" What's your line ?" 

" H'm — French goods." 

" Ah! what class of goods ?" 

" L article de Paris.'' 

" The what ? " 

" The ar-ti-cle de Pa-ris." 

" Oh ! yes, the arnticle of Pahrriss.'' 

" Exactly so. Excuse mj/ pronunciation." 

This floored him. 

" Rather impertinent, your smoke-room neighbor ! " 
you will say. 

Undeceive yourself at once upon that point. It is 
not impertinence, still less an intention to offend you, 
that urges him to put these incongruous questions to 
you. It is the interest he takes in you. The Ameri- 
can is a good fellow ; good fellowship is one of his 
chief characteristic traits. Of that I became perfectly 
convinced during my last visit to the United States. 



CHAPTER 11. 

Arrival of the Pilot— First Look at Ameri- 
can Newspapers. 



Saturday, January 4, 1 890. 

WE shall arrive in New York Harbor to-night, 
but too hite to go on shore. After sunset, 
the Custom House officers are not to be disturbed. 
We are about to land in a country where, as I remem- 
ber, everything is in subjection to the paid servant. 
In the United States, he who is paid wages com- 
mands. 

We make the best of it. After having mercilessly 
tumbled us about for nine days, the wind has gra- 
ciously calmed down, and our last day is going to be 
a good one, thanks be. There is a pure atmosphere. 
A clear line at the horizon divides space into two 
immensities, two sheets of blue sharply defined. 

Faces are smoothing out a bit. People talk, are 
becoming, in fact, quite communicative. One seems 
to say to another: "Why, after all, you don't look 
half as disagreeable as I thought. If I had only 
known that, we might have seen more of each other, 
and killed time more quickly." 

The pilot boat is in sight. It comes toward us, and 
sends off in a rowing-boat the pilot who will take us 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



into port. The arrival of the pilot on board is not an 
incident. It is an event. Does he not bring the 
New Yoi-k newspapers? And when you have been ten 
days at sea, cut off from th» world, to read the papers 
of the day before is to come back to life again, and 

once more take up your 
place in this little planet that 
has been going on its jog-trot 
way during your temporary 
suppression. 

The first article which 
meets my eyes, as I open 
the New York World, is 
headed " High time for 
Mr. Nash to put 
a stop to it!" 
This is the para- 
graph : 

Ten days ago, 
Mrs. Nash brought 
a boy into exist- 
ence. Three days 
afterward she pre- 
sented her husband 

with a little girl. Yesterday the lady was safely delivered of a 

third baby. 

" Mrs. Nash takes her time over it " would have been 
another good heading. 

Here we are in America. Old World ways don't ob- 
tain here. In Europe, Mrs. Nash would have ushered 
the little trio into this life in one day; but in Europe 
wc are out of date, rococo, and if one came over to find 




PILOT WITH PAPERS. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 13 

the Americans doing things just as they are done on the 
other side, one might as well stay at home. 

I run through the papers. 

America, I see, is spHt into two camps. Two young 
ladies, Miss Nelly BIy and Miss Elizabeth Bisland, 
have left New York by opposite routes to go around 
the world, the former sent by the New York World, 
the latter by the Cosmopolitan. Which will be back 
first ? is what all America is conjecturing upon. Bets 
have been made, and the betting is even. I do not 
know Miss Bly, but last time I came over I had the 
pleasure of making Miss Bisland's acquaintance. Nat- 
urally, as soon as I get on shore, I shall bet on Miss 
Bisland. You would do the same yourself, would you 
not ? 

I pass the day reading the papers. All the bits of 
news, insignificant or not, given in the shape of crisp, 
lively stories, help pass the time. They contain little 
information, but much amusement. The American 
newspaper always reminds me of a shop window with 
all the goods ticketed in a marvelous style, so as to at- 
tract and tickle the eye. You cannot pass over any- 
thing. The leading article is scarcely known across 
the " wet spot" ; the paper is a collection of bits of 
gossip, hearsay, news, scandal, the whole served a la 
sauce piquante. 

Nine d clock. 

We are passing the bar, and going to anchor. New 
York is sparkling with lights, and the Brooklyn Bridge 
is a thing of beauty. I will enjoy the scene for an 
hour, and then turn in. 

We land to-morrow morning at seven. 



CHAPTER III. 

Arrival — The Custom House — Things Look 
Bad — The Interviewers — First Visits — 
Things Look Brighter — "O Vanity of Vani- 
ties." 



Neiv York Harbor, January 5. 

AT seven o'clock in the morning the Custom House 
officers came on board. One of them at once 
recognizing me, said, calling me by name, that he was 
glad to see me back, and inquired if I had not brought 
Madame with me this time. It is extraordinary the 
memory of many of these Americans ! This one had 
seen me for a few minutes two years before, and proba- 
bly had had to deal with two or three hundred thousand 
people since. 

All the passengers came to the saloon and made 
their declarations one after another, after which they 
swore in the usual form that they had told the truth, 
and signed a paper to that effect. This done, many a 
poor pilgrim innocently imagines that he has finished 
with the Custom House, and he renders thanks to 
Heaven that he is going to set foot on a soil where a 
man's word is not doubted. He reckons without his 
host. In spite of his declaration, sworn and signed, 
his trunks are opened and searched with all the 
dogged zeal of a policeman who believes he is on the 

14 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



15 



track of a criminal, and who will only give up after 
perfectly convincing himself that the trunks do not 
contain the slightest dutiable article. Everything is 




CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS. 



taken out and examined. If there are any objects of 
apparel that appear like new ones to that scrutinizing 
eye, look out for squalls. 

I must say that the officer was very kind to me. 



1 6 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

For that matter, the luggage of a man who travels 
alone, without Madame and her impeditnenta, is soon 
examined. 

Before leaving the ship, I went to shake hands with 
Captain Parsell, that experienced sailor whose bright, 
interesting conversation, added to the tempting delica- 
cies provided by the cook, made many an hour pass 
right cheerily for those who, like myself, had the 
good fortune to sit at his table. I thanked him for all 
the kind attentions I had received at his hands. I 
should have liked to thank all the employees of the 
"White Star " line company. Their politeness is 
above all praise ; their patience perfectly angelical. 
Ask them twenty times a day the most absurd ques- 
tions, such as, " Will the sea soon calm down ? " " Shall 
we get into harbor on Wednesday ? " " Do you think 
we shall be in early enough to land in the evening?" 
and so on. You find them always ready with a kind 
and encouraging answer. " The barometer is going up 
and the sea is going down," or, " We are now doing our 
nineteen knot's an hour." Is it true, or not? It sat- 
isfies you, at all events. In certain cases it is so 
sweet to be deceived ! Better to be left to nurse a be- 
loved illusion than have to give it up for a harsh re- 
ality that you are powerless against. Every one is 
gratefut to those kind sailors and stewards for the 
little innocent fibs that they are willing to load their 
consciences with, in order that they may brighten your 
path across the ocean a little. 

Everett House. Noon. 
My baggage examined, I took a cab to go to the 







CAPTAIN PARSELL, R. M. S. "MAJESTIC. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. I J 

hotel. Three dollars for a mile and a half. A mere 
trifle. 

It was pouring with rain. New York on a Sunday 
is never very gay. To-day the city seemed to me hor- 
rible: dull, dirty, and dreary. It is not the fault of 
New York altogether. I have the spleen. A horribly 





EVERY ONE HAS THE GRIPPE. 



stormy passage, the stomach upside down, the heart up 
in the throat, the thought that my dear ones are three 
thousand miles away, all these things help to make 
everything look black. It would have needed a 
radiant sun in one of those pure blue skies that North 
America is so rich in to make life look agreeable and 
New York passable to-day. 

In ten minutes cabby set me down at the Everett 



1 8 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

House. After having signed the register, I went and 
looked up my manager, whose bureau is on the ground 
floor of the hotel. 

The spectacle which awaited me was appalling. 

There sat the unhappy Major Pond in his ofifice, his 
head bowed upon his chest, his arms hanging limp, the 
very picture of despair. 

The country is seized with a panic. Everybody has 
the influenza. Every one does not die of it, but every 
one is having it. The malady is not called influenza 
over here, as it is in Europe. It is called " Grippe." 
No American escapes it. Some have la grippe, others 
have the grippe, a few, even, have the la grippe. Others, 
again, the lucky ones, think they have it. Those who 
have not had it, or do not think they have it yet, 
are expecting it. The nation is in a complete state of 
demoralization. Theaters are empty, business almost 
suspended, doctors on their backs or run off their 
legs. 

At twelve a telegram is handed to me. It is from 
my friend, Wilson Barrett, who is playing in Philadel- 
phia. " Hearty greetings, dear friend. Five grains of 
quinine and two tablets of antipyrine a day, or you 
gei grippe.'' Then came many letters by every post. 
" Impossible to go and welcome you in person. I 
have la grippe. Take every precaution." Such is the 
tenor of them all. 

The outlook is not bright. What to do ? For a 
moment I have half a mind to call a cab and get 
on board the first boat bound for Europe. 

I go to my room, the windows of which overlook 
Union Square. The sky is somber, the street is black 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 19 

and deserted, the air is suffocatingly warm, and a very 
heavy rain is beating against the windows. 

Shade of Columbus, how I wish I were home 



again 



Cheer up, boy, the hand-grasps of your dear New 
York friends will be sweet after the frantic grasping 
of stair-rails and other ship furniture for so many 
days. 

I will have lunch and go and pay calls. 

Excuse me if I leave you for a few minutes. The 
interviewers are waiting for me downstairs in Major 
Pond's office. The interviewers ! a gay note at last. 
The hall porter hands me their cards. They are all 
there : representatives of the Tribune, the Times, the 
Sun, the Herald, the World, the Star. 

What nonsense Europeans have written on the 
subject of interviewing in America, to be sure! To 
hear them speak, you would believe that it is the 
greatest nuisance in the world. 

A Frenchman writes in the Figaro : " I will go to 
America if my life can be insured against that terrific 
nuisance, interviewing." 

An Englishman writes to an English paper, on 
returning from America: "When the reporters called 
on me, I invariably refused to see them." 

Trash! Cant! Hypocrisy! With the exception 
of a king, or the prime minister of one ''of the great 
powers, a man is only too glad to be interviewed. 
Don't talk to me about the nuisance, tell the truth, 
it is always such a treat to hear it. I consider that 



20 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

interviewing is a compliment, a great compliment paid 
to the interviewed. In asking a man to ^ve you his 
views, so as to enlighten the public on such and such 
a subject, you acknowledge that he is an important 
man, which is flattering to him ; or you take him for 
one, which is more flattering still. 

I maintain that American interviewers are extremely 
courteous and obliging, and, as a rule, very faithful 
reporters of what you say to them. 

Let me say that I have a lurking doubt in my mind 
whether those who have so much to say against inter- 
viewing in America have ever been asked to be inter- 
viewed at all, or have even ever run such a danger. 

I object to interviewing as a sign of decadence in 
modern journalism ; but I do not object to being 
interviewed, I like it ; and, to prove it, I will go down 
at once, and be interviewed. 

Midnight. 

The interview with the New York reporters passed 
off very well. I went through the operation like a 
man. 

After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, who had shown me a great deal of kindness 
during my first visit to America. I found in him a 
friend ready to welcome me. 

The poet and literary critic is a man of about fifty, 
rather below middle height, with a beautifully chiseled 
head. In every one of the features you can detect 
the artist, the man of delicate, tender, and refined 
feelings. It was a great pleasure for me to see him 
again. He has finished his " Library of American 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



21 



Literature," a gigantic work of erudite criticism and 
judicious compilation, which he undertook a few years 
ago in collaboration with Miss Ellen Mackay Hutchin- 
son. These eleven volumes form a perfect national 







THE INTERVIEWERS. 



monument, a complete cyclopaedia of American liter- 
ature, giving extracts from the writings of every 
American who has published anything for the last 
three hundred years (1607-1890). 

On leaving him, I went to call on Mrs. Anna Bow- 



9 



2 2 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

man Dodd, the author of " Cathedral Days," " Glo- 
rinda," " The Republic of the Future," and other 
charming books, and one of the brightest conversation- 
alists it has ever been my good fortune to meet. 
After an hour's chat with her, I had forgotten all 
about the grippe, and all other more or less imag- 
inary miseries. 

I returned to the Everett House to dress, and went 
to the Union League Club to dine with General Horace 
Porter. 

The general possesses a rare and most happy combi- 
nation of brilliant flashing Parisian wit and dry, quiet, 
American, humor. This charming caiiscur and con- 
teiir tells an anecdote as nobody I know can do ; he 
never misses fire. He assured me at table that the 
copyright bill will soon be passed, for, he added, "we 
have now a pure and pious Administration. At the 
White House they open their oysters with prayer." 
The conversation fell on American society, or, rather, 
on American Societies. The highest and lowest of 
these can be distinguished by the use of ran. "The 
blue blood of America put it before their names, as 
Van Nicken ; political society puts it after, as Sulli- 
van." 

Van-itas Van-itatum ! 

Time passed rapidly in such delightful company, 

1 finished the evening at the house of Colonel 
Robert G. Ingersoll. If there had been any cloud of 
gloom still left hanging about me, it would have van- 
ished at the sight of his sunny face. There was a 
small gathering of some thirty people, among them 
Mr, Edgar Fawcett, whose acquaintance I was delighted 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



23 



to make. Conversation went on briskly with one and 
the other, and at half-past eleven I returned to the 
hotel completely cured. 

To-morrow morning I leave for Boston at ten o'clock 
to begin the lecture tour in that city, or, to use an 
Americanism, to " open the show." 

There is a knock at the door. 

It is the hall porter with a letter : an invitation to 




HALL PORTER. 



dine with the members of the Clover Club at Philadel- 
phia on Thursday next, the i6th. 

I look at my list of engagements and find I am in 
Pittsburg on that day. 



24 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

I take a telegraph form and pen the following, which 
I will send to my friend, Major M. P. Handy, the 
president of this lively association : 

Many thanks. Am engaged in Pittsburg on the i6th. Thank 
God, cannot attend your dinner. 

I remember how those " boys " cheeked me two 
years ago, laughed at me, sat on me. That's my tele- 
gram to you, dear Cloverites, with my love. 



CHAPTER ly. 

Impressions of American Hotels. 



Boston, January 6. 

ARRIVED here this afternoon, and resumed ac- 
quaintance with American hotels. 

American hotels are all alike. 

Some are worse. 

Describe one and you have described them alL 

On the ground floor, a large entrance hall strewed 
with cuspidores for the men, and a side entrance pro- 
vided with a triumphal arch for the ladies. On this 
floor the sexes are separated as at the public baths. 

In the large hall, a counter behind which solemn 
clerks, whose business faces relax not a muscle, are 
ready with their book to enter your name and assign 
you a number. A small army of colored porters ready 
to take you in charge. Not a salute, not a word, not 
a smile of welcome. The negro takes your bag and 
makes a sign that your case is settled. You follow 
him. For the time being you lose your personality 
and become No. 375, as you would in jail. Don't ask 
questions; theirs not to answer; don't ring the bell to 
ask for a favor, if you set any value on your time. All 
the rules of the establishment are printed and posted 
in your bedroom ; you have to submit to them. No 
question to ask — you know everything. Henceforth 



26 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



you will have to be hungry from 7 to 9 A.M. ; from i 
to 3 P.M. ; from 6 to 8 P.M. The slightest infringement 




THE SAD EYED CLERK. 



of the routine would stop the wheel, so don't ask if you 
could have a meal at four o'clock ; you would be taken 
for a lunatic, or a crank (as they call it in America). 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. ' 27 

Between meals you will be supplied with ice-water 
ad libit lint. 

No privacy. No coffee-room, no smoking-room. 
No place where you can go and quietly sip a cup of 
coffee or drink a glass of beer with a cigar. You can 
have a drink at the bar, and then go and sit down in 
the hall among the crowd. 

Life in an American hotel is an alternation of the 
cellular system during the night and of the gregarious 
system during the day, an alternation of the peniten- 
tiary systems carried out at Philadelphia and at Auburn. 

It is not in the bedroom, either, that you must seek 
anything to cheer you. The bed is good, but only for 
the night. The room is perfectly nude. Not even 
" Napoleon's Farewell to his Soldiers at Fontaine- 
bleau " as in France, or " Strafford walking to the 
Scaffold " as in England. Not that these pictures are 
particularly cheerful, still they break the monotony of 
the wall paper. Here the only oases in the brown or 
gray desert are cautions. 

First of all, a notice that, in a cupboard near the 
window, you will find some twenty yards of coiled rope 
which, in case of fire, you are to fix to a hook outside 
the window. The rest is guessed. You fix the rope, 
and — you let yourself go. From a sixth, seventh, or 
eighth story, the prospect is lively. Another caution 
informs you of all that you must not do, such as your 
own washing in the bedroom. Another warns you that 
if, on retiring, you put your boots outside the door, you 
do so at your own risk and peril. Another is posted 
near the door, close to an electric bell. With a little 
care and practice, you will be able to carry out the 




THE HOTEL FIRE ESCAPE. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



29 



instructions printed thereon. The only thing wonder- 
ful about the contrivance is that the servants never 
make mistakes. 



Press 


once 




for ice-v/ater. 




twice 




" hall boy. 




three 


times 


" fireman. 




four 


" 


" chambermaid. 




five 


" 


" hot water. 




six 


" 


" ink and writing materials, 




seven 


" 


" baggage. 




eight 




" messenger. 



In some hotels I have seen the list carried to num- 
ber twelve. 

Another notice tells you what the proprietor's re- 
sponsibilities are, and at what time the meals take 
place. Now this last notice is the most important of 
all. Woe to you if you forget it ! For if you should 
present yourself one minute after the dining-room door 
is closed, no human consideration would get it open 
for you. Supplications, arguments would be of no 
avail. Not even money. 

"What do you mean?" some old-fashioned Eu- 
ropean will exclaim. " When the table d'hote is over, 
of course you cannot expect the menu to be served to 
you ; but surely you can order a steak or a chop." 

No, you cannot, not even an omelette or a piece of 
cold meat. If you arrive at one minute past three (in 
small towns, at one minute past two) you find the 
dining-room closed, and you must wait till six o'clock 
to see its hospitable doors open again. 



When you enter the dining-room, you must not be- 



30 A FREiVCHMAN- /AT AMERICA. 

lieve that you can go and sit where you like. The chief 
waiter assigns you a seat, and you must take it. With 
a superb wave of the hand, he signs to you to follow 
him. He does not even turn round to see if you are 
behind him, following him in all the meanders he de- 
scribes, amid the sixty, eighty, sometimes hundred 
tables that are in the room. He takes it for granted 
you are an obedient, submissive traveler who knows 
his duty. Altogether I traveled in the United States 
for about ten months, and I never came across an 
American so daring, so independent, as to actually 
take any other seat than the one assigned to him by 
that tremendous potentate, the head waiter. Occa- 
sionally, just to try him, I would sit down in a chair I 
took a fancj^ to. But he would come and fetch me, 
and tell me that I could not stay there. In Europe, 
the waiter asks you where you would like to sit. In 
America, you ask him where you may sit. He is a 
paid servant, therefore a master in America. He is in 
command, not of the other waiters, but of the guests. 
Several times, recognizing friends in the dining-room, 
I asked the man to take me to their tables (I should 
not have dared go by myself), and the permission was 
granted with a patronizing sign of the head. I have 
constantly seen Americans stop on the threshold of 
the dining-room door, and wait until the chief waiter 
had returned from placing a guest to come and fetch 
them in their turn. I never saw them venture alone, 
and take an empty seat, without the sanction of the 
waiter. 

The guests feel struck with awe in that dining-room, 
and solemnly bolt their food as quickly as they can. 




THE HEAD MAN. 



32 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



You hear less noise in an American hotel dining-room 
containing five hundred people, than you do at a 
French tabic d Jiote accommodating fifty people, at a 
German one containing a dozen guests, or at a table 

where two Italians 
are dining tcte-a-tete. 
The head waiter, 
at large Northern 
and Western hotels, 
is a white man. In 
the Southern ones, 
he is a mulatto or a 
black ; but white or 
black, he is always a 
magnificent speci- 
men of his race. 
There is not a ghost 
of a savor of the 
serving man about 
him ; no whiskers 
and shaven upper 
lips reminding you 
of the waiters of the 
Old World; but al- 
ways a fine mustache, 
the twirling of which 
helps to give an air 
of nonchalant superiority to its wearer. The mulatto 
head-waiters in the South really look like dusky 
princes. Many of them are so handsome and carry 
themselves so superbly that you find them very im- 
pressive at first and would fain apologize to them. 




"look like dusky princes.' 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



ZZ 



You feel as if you wanted 
to thank them for kindly 
condescending to concern 
themselves about anything 
so commonplace as your seat 
at table. 

In smaller hotels, the 
waiters are all waitresses. 
The "waiting" is 
done by dam 



sels entirely — 
or rather by the 
guests of the 
hotel. 

If the South- 
ern head waiter 
looks like a 
prince, what 
shall we say of 
the head - wait- 
ress in the East, 
the North, and 
the West? 
No term short 
of queenly will 
d esc ri be her 
stately bearing 
as she moves about among her bevy of reduced 
duchesses. She is evidently chosen for her appear- 
ance. She is " divinely tall," as well as *' most 




^ 



SHE IS CROWNED WITH A GIGANTIC MASS 
OF FRIZZLED HAIR." 



34 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

divinely fair," and, as if to add to her import- 
ance, she is crowned with a gigantic mass of frizzled 
hair. All the waitresses have this coififure. It is 
a livery, as caps are in the Old World ; but instead 
of being a badge of servitude it looks, and is, alarm- 
ingly emancipated — so much so that, before making 
close acquaintance with my dishes, I always examine 
them with great care. A beautiful mass of hair looks 
lovely on the head of a woman, but one in your soup, 
even if it had strayed from the tresses of your beloved 
one, would make the corners of your mouth go down, 
and the tip of your nose go up. 

A regally handsome woman always " goes well in 
the landscape," as the French say, and I have seen 
specimens of these waitresses' so handsome and so 
commanding-looking that, if they cared to come over 
to Europe and play the queens in London pantomimes, 
I feel sure they would command quite exceptional 
prices, and draw big salaries and crowded houses. 

The thing which strikes me most disagreeably, in the 
American hotel dining-room, is the sight of the tre- 
mendous waste of food that goes on at every meal. 
No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with 
this ; but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most 
remarkable. In France, where, I venture to say, 
people live as well as anywhere else, if not better, 
there is a horror of anything like waste of good food. 
It is to me, therefore, a repulsive thing to see the 
wanton manner in which some Americans will waste 
at one meal enough to feed several hungry fellow- 
creatures. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 35 

In the large hotels, conducted on the American 
plan, there are rarely fewer than fifty different dishes 
on the menu at dinner-time. Every day, and at every 
meal, you may see people order three times as much 
of this food as they could under any circumstances eat, 
and, after picking it and spoiling one dish after another, 
send the bulk away uneaten. I am bound to say that 
this practice is not only to be observed in hotels where 
the charge is so much per day, but in those conducted 
on the European plan, that is, where you pay for every 
item you order. There I notice that people proceed 
in much the same wasteful fashion. It is evidently 
not a desire to have more than is paid for, but simply 
a bad and ugly habit. I hold that about five hundred 
hungry people could be fed out of the waste that is 
going on at such large hotels as the Palmer House or 
the Grand Pacific Hotel of Chicago — and I have no 
doubt that such five hundred hungry people could 
easily be found in Chicago every day. 

I think that many Europeans are prevented from 
going to America by an idea that the expense of 
traveling and living there is very great. This is 
quite a delusion. For my part I find that hotels are 
as cheap in America as in England at any rate, and 
railway traveling in Pullman cars is certainly cheaper 
than in European first-class carriages, and incompa- 
rably more comfortable. Put aside in America such 
hotels as Delmonico's, the Brunswick in New York ; 
the Richelieu in Chicago ; and in England such hotels 
as the Metropole, the Victoria, the Savoy; and take 
the good hotels of the country, such as the Grand 



36 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

Pacific at Chicago ; the West House at Minneapolis, 
the Windsor at Montreal, the Cadillac at Detroit. I 
only mention those I remember as the very best. In 
these hotels, you are comfortably lodged and magnifi- 
cently fed for from three to five dollars a day. In 
no good hotel of England, France, Germany, Italy, 
Switzerland, would you get the same amount of com- 
fort, or even luxury, at the same price, and those who 
require a sitting-room get it for a little less than they 
would have to pay in a European hotel. 

The only very dear hotels I have come across in the 
United States are those of Virginia. There I have 
been charged as much as two dollars a day, but never 
in my life did I pay so dear for what I had, never 
in my life did I see so many dirty rooms or so many 
messes that were unfit for human food. 

But I will just say this much for the American re- 
finement of feeling to be met with, even in the hotels 
of Virginia, even in the "lunch" rooms in small sta- 
tions, you are supplied, at the end of each meal, with a 
bowl of water — to rinse your mouth. 




CHAPTER V. 

My Opening Lecture— Reflections on Audi- 
ences I Have Had — The Man who Won't 
Smile — The One who LaugiiS' too Soon, and 
Many Others. 



Boston, January 7. 

BEGAN my second American tour under most favor- 
able auspices last night, in the Tremont Tempie. 
The huge hall was crowded with an audience of about 
2500 people — a most kind, warm, keen, and appreciative 
audience. I was a little afraid of the Bostonians ; I had 
heard so much about their power of criticism that I had 
almost come to the conclusion that it was next to im- 
possible to please them. The Boston newspapers this 
morning give full reports of my lecture. All of them are 
kind and most favorable. This is a good start, and I 
feel hopeful. 

The subject of my lecture was " A National Portrait 
Gallery of the Anglo-Saxon Races," in which I delin- 
eated the English, the Scotch, and the American char- 
acters. Strange to say, my Scotch sketches seemed to 
tickle them most. This, however, I can explain to 
myself. Scotch "wut" is more like American hu- 
mor than any kind of wit I know. There is about it 
the same dryness, the same quaintness, the same pre- 
posterousness, the same subtlety. 

37 



38 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



flattei 



My Boston audience also seemed to enjoy my criti- 
cisms of America and the Americans, which disposes 
of the absurd belief that the Americans will not listen to 
the criticism of their country. There are Americans 

and Americans, as there 
is criticism and criticism. 
If you can speak of 
people's virtues without 
; if you can speak 
their weaknesses 
\ failings with 
idness and good 
humor, I be- 
lieve you can 
criticise to 
your heart's 
content with- 
out ever fear- 
ing to give of- 
fense to intelli- 
gent and fair- 
minded peo- 
ple. I admire 
and love the 
Americans. 
BOSTON. How could 

they help see- 
ing it through all the little criticisms that I indulged 
in on the platform ? On the whole, I was delighted 
with my Boston audience, and, to judge from the 
reception they gave me, I believe I succeeded in 
pleasing them. I have three more engagements in 




A FRENCHMAN TN AMERICA. 39 

Boston, so I shall have the pleasure of meeting the 
Bostonians again. 



I have never been able to lecture, whether in Eng- 
land, in Scotland, in Ireland or in America, without dis- 
covering, somewhere in the hall, after speaking for five 
minutes or so, an old gentleman who will not smile. 
He was there last night, and it is evident that he is 
going to favor me with his presence every night dur- 
ing this second American tour. He generally sits near 
the platform, and not unfrequently on the first row. 
There is a horrible fascination about that man. You 
cannot get your eyes off him. You do your utmost to 
" fetch him " — you feel it to be your duty not to send 
him home empty-headed ; your conscience tells you 
that he has not to please you, but that _;'<?/^ are paid to 
please him, and you struggle on. You w'ould like to 
slip into his pocket the price of his seat and have him 
removed, or throw the water bottle at his face and 
make him show signs of life. As it is, you try to look 
the other way, but you know he is there, and that does 
not improve matters. 

Now this man, who will not smile, very often is not 
so bad as he looks. You imagine that you bore him 
to death, but you don't. You wonder how it is he 
does not go, but the fact is he actually enjoys him- 
self — inside. Or, maybe, he is a professional man 
himself, and no conjuror has ever been known to laugh 
at another conjuror's tricks. A great American 
humorist relates that, after speaking for an hour 
and a half without succeeding in getting a smile from 



40 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

a certain man in the audience, he sent some one to in- 
quire into the state of his mind. 

" Excuse me, sir, did you not enjoy the lecture that 
has been deh'vered to-night? " 

" Very much indeed," said the man, " it was a most 
clever and entertaining lecture." 

" But you never smiled " 

" Oh, no — I'm a liar myself." 

Sometimes there are other reasons to explain the 
unsmiling man's attitude. 

One evening I had lectured in Birmingham. On 
the first row there sat the whole time an old gentle- 
man, with his umbrella standing between his legs, his 
hands crossed on the handle, and his chin resting on 
his hands. Frowning, his mouth gaping, and his eyes 
perfectly vacant, he remained motionless, looking at 
me, and for an hour and twenty minutes seemed to 
say to me: " My poor fellow, you may do what you 
like, but you won't * fetch ' me to-night, I can tell 
you." I looked at him, I spoke to him, I winked at 
him, I aimed at him ; several times even I paused so 
as to give him ample time to see a point. All was in 
vain. I had just returned, after the lecture, to the sec- 
retary's room behind the platform, when he entered. 

" Oh, that man again ! " I cried, pointing to 
him. 

He advanced toward me, took my hand, and said : 

"Thank you very much for your excellent lecture, I 
have enjoyed it very much." 

" Have you ? " said I. 

" Would you be kind enough to give me your auto- 




THE OLD GENTLEMAN WHO WILL NOT SMILE. 



42 A FRENCHMAN IN A AI ERICA. 

graph ? " And he pulled out of his pocket a beauti- 
ful autograph book. 

" Well," I said to the secretary in a whisper, " this 
old gentleman is extremely kind to ask for my auto- 
graph, for I am certain he has not enjoyed my lecture." 

" What makes you think so? " 

"Why, he never smiled once." 

" Oh, poor old gentleman," said the secretary ; " he 
is stone deaf." 

Many a lecturer must have met this man. 

It would be unwise, when you discover that certain 
members of the audience will not laugh, to give them 
up at once. As long as you are on the platform there 
is hope. 

I was once lecturing in the chief town of a great 
hunting center in England. On the first row sat half 
a dozen hair-parted-in-the-middle, single-eye-glass 
young swells. They stared at me unmoved, and 
never relaxed a muscle except for yawning. It was 
most distressing to see how the poor fellows looked 
bored. How I did wish I could do something for 
them ! I had spoken for nearly an hour when, by ac- 
cident, I upset the tumbler on my table. The water 
trickled down the cloth. The young men laughed, 
roared. They were happy and enjoying themselves, 
and I had " fetched " them at last. I have never for- 
gotten this trick, and when I see in the audience an 
apparently hopeless case, I often resort to it, generally 
with success. 

There are other people who do not much enjoy 
your lecture : your own. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



43 



Of course you must forgive your wife. The dear 
creature knows all your lectures by heart ; she has 
heard your jokes hundreds of times. She comes to 
your lectures rather to see how you are going to be 
received than to listen to you. Besides, she feels that 
for an hour and a half you do not belong to her. 
When she comes with you to the lecture hall, you are 
both ushered into the secretary's room. Two or three 




THE CHAPPIES WHO WOULD NOT LAUGH. 



minutes before it is tim.e to go on the platform, it is 
suggested to her that it is time she should take her 
seat among the audience. She looks at the secretary 
and recognizes that for an hour and a half her husband 
is the property of this official, who is about to hand 
him over to the tender mercies of the public. As she 
says, " Oh, yes, I suppose I must go," she almost feels 
like shaking hands with her husband, as Mrs. Baldwin 
takes leave of the Professor before he starts on his 
aerial trip. But, though she may not laugh, her heart 
is with you, and she is busy watching the audience, 
ever ready to tell them, " Now, don't you think this is 



44 . A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

a very good point ? Well, then, if you do, why don't 
you laugh and cheer?" She is part and parcel of 
yourself. She is not jealous of your success, for she 
is your helpmate, your kind and sound counselor, and 
I can assure you that if an audience should fail to be 
responsive, it would never enter her head to lay the 
blame on her husband ; she would feel the most su- 
preme co#itempt for " that stupid audience that was 
unable to appreciate you." That's ill. 

But your other own folk ! You are no hero to them. 
To judge the efTect of anything, you must be placed at 
a certain distance, and your own folks are too near you. 

One afternoon I had given a lecture to a large and 
fashionable audience in the South of England. A near 
relative of mine, who lived in the neighborhood, was 
in the hall. He never smiled. I watched him from 
the beginning to the end. When the lecture was 
over he came to the little room behind the platform to 
take me to his house. As he entered the room I was 
settling the money matters with my impresario. I will 
let you into the secret. There was fifty-two pounds in 
the house, and my share was two-thirds of the gross 
receipts, that is about thirty-four pounds. My relative 
heard the sum. As we drove along in his dog-cart he 
nudged me and said : 

" Did you make thirty-four pounds this afternoon ?" 

"Oh, did you hear?" I said. " Yes, that was my 
part of the takings. For a small town I am quite 
satisfied." 

" I should think you were !" he replied. " If you 
had made thirty-four shillings you would have been 
well paid for your work ! " 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 45 

Nothing is more true to life than the want of appre- 
ciation the successful man encounters from relatives 
and also from former friends. Nothing is more cer- 
tain than when a man has lived on terms of perfect 
equality and familiarity with a certain set of men, he 
can never hope to be anything but "plain John" to 
them, though by his personal efforts he may have ob- 
tained the applause of the public. Did he not rub 
shoulders with them for years in the same walk of 
life? Why these bravos? What was there in him 
more than in them? Even though they may have 
gone so far as to single him out as a " rather clever 
fellow," while he was one of theirs, still the surprise at 
the public appreciation is none the less keen, his ad- 
vance toward the front an unforgivable offense, and 
they are immediately seized with a desire to rush out 
in the highways and proclaim that he is only " Jack," 
and not the " John" that his admirers think him. I 
remember that, in the early years of my life in England, 
when I had not the faintest idea of ever writing a book 
on John Bull, a young English friend of mine did me 
the honor of appreciating highly all my observations 
on British life and manners, and for years urged me 
hard and often to jot them down to make a book of. 
One day the book was finished and appeared in print. 
It attracted a good deal of public attention, but no 
one was more surprised than this man, who, from a 
kind friend, was promptly transformed into the most 
severe and unfriendly of my critics, and went about 
saying that the book and the amount of public atten- 
tion bestowed upon it were both equally ridiculous. 
He has never spoken to me since. 



46 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



A successful man is very often charged with wishing 
to turn his back on his former friends. No accusation 




THE MAN WHO LAUGHS. 



is more false. Nothing would please him more than 
to retain the friends of more modest times, but it 
is they who have changed their feelings. They snub 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. Al 

him, and this man, who is in constant need of moral 
support And pick-me-up, cannot stand it. 

But let us return to the audience. 

The man who won't smile is not the only person 
who causes you some annoyance. 

There is the one who laughs too soon ; who laughs 
before you have made your points, and who thinks, 
because you have opened your lecture with a joke, 
that everything you say afterward is a joke. There is 
another rather objectionable person ; it is the one 
who explains your points to his neighbor, and makes 
them laugh aloud just at the moment when you re- 
quire complete silence to fire ofT one of your best 
remarks. 

There is the old lady who listens to you frowning, 
and who does not mind what you are saying, but is all 
the time shaking for fear of what you are going to say 
next. She never laughs before she has seen other 
people laugh. Then she thinks she is safe. 

All these I am going to have in America again ; that 
is clear. But I am now a man of experience. I have 
lectured in concert rooms, in lecture halls, in theaters, 
in churches, in schools, I have addressed embalmed 
Britons in English health resorts, petrified English 
mummies at hydropathic establishments, and lunatics 
in private asylums. 

I am ready for the fray. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A Connecticut Audience— Merry Meriden— A 
Hard Pull. 



From Meriden, January 8. 

A CONNECTICUT audience was a new experi- 
ence to me. Yesterday I had a crowded room 
at the Opera House in Meriden ; but if you had been 
behind the scenery, when I made my appearance on 
the stage, you would not have suspected it, for not 
one of the audience treated me to a little applause. I 
was frozen, and so were they. For a quarter of an 
hour I proceeded very cautiously, feeling the ground, 
as it were, as I went on. By that time, the thaw set 
in, and they began to smile. I must say that they had 
been very attentive from the beginning, and seemed 
very interested in the lecture. Encouraged by this, I 
warmed too. It was curious to watch that audience. 
By twos and threes the faces lit up with amusement 
till, by and by, the house wore quite an animated 
aspect. Presently there was a laugh, then two, then 
laughter more general. All the ice was gone. Next, 
a bold spirit in the stalls ventured some applause. At 
his second outburst he had company. The uphill 
work was nearly over now, and I began to feel better. 
The infection spread up to the circles and the gallery, 

48 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 49 

and at last there came a real good hearty round of 
applause. I had " fetched " them after all. But it 
was tough work. When once I had them in hand, I 
took good care not to let them go. 



I visited several interesting establishments this 
morning. Merry Meriden is famous for its manufac- 
tories of electro-plated silverware. Unfortunately I am 
not yet accustomed to the heated rooms of America, 
and I could not stay in the show-rooms more than a 
few minutes. I should have thought the heat was 
strong enough to melt all the goods on view. This 
town looks like a bee-hive of activity, with its animated 
streets, its electric cars. Dear old Europe! With the 
exception of a few large cities, the cars are still drawn 
by horses, like in the time of Sesostris and Nebuchad- 
nezzar. 

On arriving at the station a man took hold of my 
bag and asked to take care of it until the arrival of the 
train. I do not know whether he belonged to the 
hotel where I spent the night, or to the railroad com- 
pany. Whatever he was, I felt grateful for this won- 
derful show of courtesy. 

" I heard you last night at the Opera House," he 
said to me. 

" Why, were you at the lecture ? " 

"Yes, sir, and I greatly enjoyed it." 

" Well, why didn't you laugh sooner ? " I said. 

" I wanted to very much ! " 

"Why didn't you ? " 




"I WAS AT YOUR LECTURE LAST NIGHT. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 51 

" Well, sir, I couldn't very well laugh before the 
rest." 

" Why didn't you give the signal ? " 
"You see, sir," he said, "we are in Connecticut." 
" Is laughter prohibited by the Statute Book in 
Connecticut?" I remarked. 

" No, sir, but if you all laugh at the same time, 

then " 

" I see, nobody can tell who is the real criminal." 
The train arrived. I shook hands with my friend, 
after offering him half a dollar for holding my bag — 
whicii he refused — and went on board. 

In the parlor car, I met my kind friend Colonel 
Charles H. Taylor, editor of that very successful paper, 
the Boston Globe. We had luncheon together in the 
dining car, and time passed delightfully in his com- 
pany till we reached the Grand Central station. New 
York, when we parted. He was kind enough to make 
me promise to look him up in Boston in a fortnight's 
time, when I make my second appearance in the City 
of Culture. 




CHAPTER VII. 

A Tempting Offer— The Thursday Club— Bill 
Nye— Visit to Young Ladies' Schools— The 
Players' Club. 



Neiv York, January 9. 

ON returning here, I found a most curious letter 
awaiting me. I must tell you that in Boston, 
last Monday, I made the following remarks in my 
lecture: 

"The American is, I believe, on the road to the 
possession of all that can contribute to the well-being 
and success of a nation, but he seems to me to have 
missed the path that leads to real happiness. To live 
in a whirl is not to live well. The little French shop- 
keeper who locks his shop-door from half-past one, so 
as not to be disturbed while he is having his dinner 
with his wife and tamily, has come nearer to solving 
the great problem of life, 'How to be happy,' than the 
American who sticks on his door: 'Gone to dinner, 
shall be back in five minutes.* You eat too fast, and I 
understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover 
your walls, your forests even, with their advertise- 
ments." 

And I named the firm of pill-makers. 

The letter is from them. They offer me $1000 if I 

52 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



53 



will repeat the phrase at every lecture I give during 
my tour in the United States. 




WHERE INDIGESTION IS MANUFACTURED. 

You may imagine if I will be careful to abstain in 
the future. 



I lectured to-night before the members of the 
Thursday Club — a small, but very select audience, 



54 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

gathered in the drawing-room of one of the members. 
The lecture was followed by a conversazione. A very- 
pleasant evening. 

I left the house at half-past eleven. The night 
was beautiful. I walked to the hotel, along Fifth 
Avenue to Madison Square, and along Broadway to 
Union Square. 

What a contrast to the great thoroughfares of Lon- 
don ! Thousands of people here returning from the 
theaters and enjoying their walks, instead of being 
obliged to rush into vehicles to escape the sights pre- 
sented at night by the West End streets of London. 
Here you can walk at night with your wife and 
daughter, without the least fear of their coming into 
contact with flaunting vice. 

Excuse a reflection on a subject of a very domestic 
character. My clothes have come from the laundress 
with the bill. 

Now let me give you a sound piece of advice. 

When you go to America, bring with you a dozen 
shirts. No more. When these are soiled, buy a 
new dozen, and so on. You will thus get a supply 
of linen for many years to come, and save your wash- 
ing bills in America, where the price of a shirt is 
much the same as the cost of washing it. 

January lo. 

I was glad to see Bill Nye again. He turned up 

at the Everett House this morning. I like to gaze 

at his clean-shaven face, that is seldom broken by a 

smile, and to hear his long, melancholy drawl. His 



A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 55 

lank form, and his polished dome of thought, as he 
delights in calling his joke box, help to make him so 
droll on the platform. When his audience begins to 
scream with laughter, he stops, looks at them in 
astonishment ; the corners of his mouth drop and an 
expression of sadness comes over his face. The effect 
is irresistible. They shriek for mercy. But they 
don't get it. He is accompanied by his own man- 
ager, who starts with him for the north to-night. 
This manager has no sinecure. I don't think Bill 
Nye has ever been found in a depot ready to catch a 
train. So the manager takes him to the station, puts 
him in the right car, gets him out of his sleeping 
berth, takes him to the hotel, sees that he is behind 
the platform a few minutes before the time announced 
for the beginning of the lecture, and generally looks 
after his comfort. Bill is due in Ohio to-morrow 
night, and leaves New York to-night by the Grand 
Central Depot. 

"Are you sure it's by the Grand Central?" he said 
to me. 

" Why, of course, corner of Forty-second Street, a 
five or ten minutes' ride from here." 

You should have seen the expression on his face, as 
he drawled away : 

" How — shall — I — get — there, I — wonder ? " 

This afternoon I paid a most interesting visit to 
several girls' schools. The pupils were ordered by 
the head-mistress, in each case, to gather in the large 
room. There they arrived, two by two, to the sound 
of a march played on the piano by one of the under- 



56 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

mistresses. When they had all reached their respec- 
tive places, two chords were struck on the instrument, 
and they all sat down with the precision of the best 
drilled Prussian regiment. Then some sang, others 
recited little poems, or epigrams — mostly at the ex- 
pense of men. When, two years ago, I visited the 
Normal School for girls in the company of the Presi- 
dent of the Education Board and Colonel Elliott F. 
Shepard, it was the anniversary of George Eliot's 
birth. The pupils, one by one, recited a few quota- 
tions from her works, choosing all she had written 
against man. 

When the singing and the recitations were over, the 
mistress requested me to address a few words to the 
young ladies. An American is used from infancy to 
deliver a speech on the least provocation. I am not. 
However, I managed to congratulate these young 
American girls on their charming appearance, and to 
thank them for the pleasure they had afforded me. 
Then two chords were struck on the piano and all 
stood up ; two more chords, and all marched off in 
double file to the sound of another march. Not a 
smile, not a giggle. All these young girls, from six- 
teen to twenty, looked at me with modesty, but com- 
plete self-assurance, certainly with far more assurance 
than I dared look at them. 

Then the mistress asked me to go to the gymna- 
sium. There the girls arrived and, as solemnly as be- 
fore, went through all kinds of muscular exercises. 
They are never allowed to sit down in the class rooms 
more than two hours at a time. They have to go 
down to the gymnasium every two hours. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 57 

I was perfectly amazed to see such discipline. 
These young girls are the true daughters of a great Re- 
public : self-possessed, self-confident, dignified, respect- 
ful, law-abiding. 

I also visited the junior departments of those schools. 
In one of them, eight hundred little girls from five to 
ten years of age were gathered together, and, as in the 
other departments, sang and recited to me. These 
young children are taught by the girls of the Normal 
School, under the supervision of mistresses. Here 
teaching is learned by teaching. A good method. 
Doctors are not allowed to practice before they have 
attended patients in hospitals. Why should people be 
allowed to teach before they have attended schools as 
apprentice teachers? 

I had to give a speech to these dear little ones. I 
wish I had been able to give them a kiss instead. 

In my little speech I had occasion to /emark that I 
had arrived in America only a week before. After I 
left, it appears that a little girl, aged about six, went to 
her mistress and said to her : 

" He's only been here a week ! And how beautifully 
he speaks English already ! " 

I have been "put up" at the Players' Club by Mr. 
Edmund Clarence Stedman, and dined with him there 
to-night. 

This club is the snuggest house I know in New 
York. Only a few months old, it possesses treasures 
such as few clubs a hundred years old possess. It 
was a present from Mr. Edwin Booth," the greatest 
actor America has produced. He bought the house 



58 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



in Twentieth Street, facing Gramercy Park, furnished 
it handsomely and with the greatest taste, and filled it 




f 



"how beautifully he speaks ENGLISH." 

with all the artistic treasures that he has collected dur- 
ing his life : portraits of celebrated actors, most valu- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 59 

able old engravings, photographs with the originals' 
autographs, china, curios of all sorts, stage properties, 
such as the sword used by Macready in Macbeth, and 
hundreds of such beautiful and interesting souvenirs. 
On the second floor is the library, mostly composed 
of works connected with the drama. 

This club is a perfect gem. 

When in New York, Mr. Booth occupies a suite of 
rooms on the second floor, which he has reserved for 
himself ; but he has handed over the property to the 
trustees of the club, who, after his death, will become 
the sole proprietors of the house and of all its priceless 
contents. It was a princely gift, worthy of the prince 
of actors. The members are all connected with litera- 
ture, art, and the drama, and number about one hun- 
dred. 



-XL 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Flourishing of Coats-of-Arms in America 
— Reflections Thereon— Forefathers Made 
TO Order — The Phonograph at Home — The 
Wealth of New York — Departure for 
Buffalo. 



Neiv York, January ii. 

THERE are in America, as in many other coun- 
tries of the world, people who have coats-of-arms, 
and whose ancestors had no arms to their coats. 

This remark was suggested by the reading of the 
following paragraph in the New York World this 
morning: 

There is growing in this country the rotten influence of rank, 
pride of station, contempt for labor, scorn of poverty, worship of 
caste, such as we verily believe is growing in no country in the 
world. What are the ideals that fill so large a part of the day and 
generation ? For the boy it is riches ; for the girl the marrying of 
a title. The ideal of this time in America is vast riches and the 
trappings of rank. It is good that proper scorn should be 
expressed of such ideals. 

American novelists, journalists, and preachers are 
constantly upbraiding and ridiculing their country- 
women for their love of titled foreigners ; but the 
society women of the great Republic only love the 
foreign lords all the more ; and I have heard some of 

60 



A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 



6i 



them openly express their contempt of a form of gov- 
ernment whose motto is one of the clauses of the 
great Declaration of Independence : " All men are cre- 
ated equal." I really believe that if the society 
women of America had their own way, they would 




set up a monarchy to-morrow, in the hope of seeing an 
aristocracy established as the sequel of it. 

President Garfield once said that the only real coats- 
of-arms in America were shirt-sleeves. The epigram is 
good, but not based on truth, as every epigram should 
be. Labor in the States is not honorable for its own 
sake, but only if it brings wealth. President Garfield's 
epigram " fetched " the crowd, no doubt, as any smart 
democratic or humanitarian utterance will anywhere, 



62 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

whether it be emitted from the platform, the stage, 
the pulpit, or the hustings ; but if any American 
philosopher heard it, he must have smiled. 

A New York friend who called on me this morning, 
and with whom I had a chat on this subject, assured 
me that there is now such a demand in the States for 
pedigrees, heraldic insignia, mottoes, and coronets, 
that it has created a new industry. He also informed 
me that almost every American city has a college of 
heraldry, which will provide unbroken lines of ances- 
tors, and make to order a new line of forefathers "of 
the most approved pattern, with suitable arms, etc." 

Addison's prosperous foundling, who ordered at the 
second-hand picture-dealer's "a complete set of ances- 
tors," is, according to my friend, a typical personage 
to be met with in the States nowadays. 

Bah ! after all, every country has her snobs. Why 
should America be an exception to the rule? When I 
think of the numberless charming people I have met in 
this country, I may as well leave it to the Europeans 
who have come in contact with American snobs to 
speak about them, inasmuch as the subject is not par- 
ticularly entertaining. 

What amuses me much more here is the effect of 
democracy on what we Europeans would call the lower 
classes. 

A few days ago, in a hotel, I asked a porter if my 
trunk had arrived from the station and had been taken 
to my room. 

"I don't know," he said majestically; "you ask 
that gentleman." 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



63 



The gentleman pointed out to me was the negro 
who looks after the luggage in the establishment. 

In the papers you may read in the advertisement 
columns: "Washing 
wanted by a lady at 
such and such ad- 
dress." 

The cabman will 
ask, *' If you are the 
man as wants a gen- 
tleman to drive him 
to the deepo." 

During an inquiry 
concerning the work- 
house at Cambridge, 
Mass., a witness 
spoke of the "ladies' 
cells,"asbeing all that 
should be desired. 

Democracy, such 
is thy handiwork ! the new york cabman. 




I went to the Stock Exchange in Wall Street at one 
o'clock. I thought that Whitechapel, on Saturday 
night, was beyond competition as a scene of rowdyism. 
I have now altered this opinion. I am still wondering 
whether I was not guyed by my pilot, and whether I 
was not shown the playground of a madhouse, at the 
time when all the most desperate lunatics are let 
loose. 

After lunch I went to Falk's photograph studio to 
be taken, and read the first page of " Jonathan and 



64 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

His Continent," into his phonograph. Marvelous, this 
phonograph ! I imagine Mr. Falk has the best collec- 
tion of cylinders in the world. I heard a song by 
Patti, the piano played by Von Biilow, speeches, or- 
chestras, and what not ! The music is reproduced most 
faithfully. With the voice the instrument is not quite 
so successful. Instead of your own voice, you fancy 
you hear an imitation of it by Punch. All the same, it 
seems to me to be the wonder of the age. 

After paying a few calls, and dining quietly at the 
Everett House, I went to the Metropolitan Opera 
House, and saw " The Barber of Bagdad." Cornelius's 
music is Wagnerian in aim, but I did not carry away 
with me a single bar of all I heard. After all, this is 
perhaps the aim of Wagnerian music. 

What a sight is the Metropolitan Opera House, with 
its boxes full of lovely women, arrayed in gorgeous 
garments, and blazing with diamonds ! What luxury ! 
What wealth is gathered there ! 

How interesting it would be to know the exact 
amount of wealth of which New York can boast ! In 
this morning's papers I read that land on Fifth Avenue 
has lately sold for $115 a square foot. In an acre of 
land there are 43,560 square feet, which at $115 a 
foot would be $5,009,400 an acre. Just oblige me by 
thinking of it ! 

January 12. 

Went to the Catholic Cathedral at eleven. A mass 

by Haydn was splendidly rendered by full orchestra 

and admirable chorus. The altar was a blaze of candles. 

The yellow of the lights and the plain mauve of two 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 65 

windows, one on each side of the candles, gave a most 
beautiful crocus-bed effect. I enjoyed the service. 

In the evening I dined with Mr. Lloyd Bryce, editor 
of the North American Review, at the splendid resi- 
dence of his father-in-law, Mr. Cooper, late Mayor of 
New York. Mrs. Lloyd Bryce is one of the hand- 
somest American women I have met, and a most 
charming and graceful hostess. I reluctantly left 
early so as to prepare for my night journey to 
Buffalo. 



M. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Different Ways of Advertising a Lecture- 
American Impresarios and Their Methods. 



Buffalo, January 13. 

WHEN you intend to give a lecture anywhere, 
and you wish it to be a success, it is a mistake 
to make a mystery of it. 

On arriving here this morning, I found that my com- 
ing had been kept perfectly secret. 

Perhaps my impresario wishes my audience to be 
very select, and has sent only private circulars to the 
intelligent, well-to-do inhabitants of the place — or, I 
said to myself, perhaps the house is all sold, and he has 
no need of any further advertisements. 

I should very much like to know. 

Sometimes, however, it is a mistake to advertise a 
lecture too widely. You run the risk of getting the 
wrong people. 

A few years ago, in Dundee, a little corner gallery, 
placed at the end of the hall where I was to speak, was 
thrown open to the public at sixpence. I warned the 
manager that I was no attraction for the sixpenny 
public ; but he insisted on having his own way. 

The hall was well filled, but not the little gallery, 
^here I counted about a dozen people. Two of these, 

6^ 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 67 

however, did not remain long, and, after the lecture, I 
was told that they had gone to the box-office and asked 
to have their money returned to them. "Why," they 

said, " it's a d swindle ; it's only a man talking." 

The man at the box-office was a Scotchman, and it 
will easily be understood that the two sixpences 
remained in the hands of the management. 

I can well remember how startled I was, two years 
ago, on arriving in an American town where I was to 
lecture, to see the walls covered'with placards announc- 
ing my lecture thus : " He is coming, ah, ha ! " And 
after I had arrived, new placards were stuck over the 
old ones : " He has arrived, ah, ha ! " 

In another American town I was advertised as "the 
best paying platform celebrity in the world." In 
another, in the following way : "If you would grow 
fat and happy, go and hear Max O'Rell to-night." 

One of my Chicago lectures was advertised thus: 
"Laughter is restful. If you desire to feel as though 
you had a vacation for a week, do not fail to attend 
this lecture." 

I was once fortunate enough to deal with a local 
manager who, before sending it to the newspapers, 
submitted to my approbation the following advertise- 
ment, of which he was very proud. I don't know 
whether it was his own literary production, or whether 
he had borrowed it of a showman friend. Here it is: 

Two Hours of Unalloyed Fun and Happiness 

Will put two inches of solid fat even upon the ribs of the most 
cadaverous old miser. Everybody shouts peals of laughter as the 
rays of fun are emitted from this famous son of merry-makers, 




AS JOHN BULL. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 69 

I threatened to refuse to appear if the advertise- 
ment was inserted in the papers. This manager later 
gave his opinion that, as a lecturer, I was good, but 
that as a man, I was a little bit " stuck-up." 

When you arrive in an American town to lecture, 
you find the place flooded with your pictures, huge 
lithographs stuck on the walls, on the shop windows, 
in your very hotel entrance hall. Your own face 
stares at you everywhere, you are recognized by 
everybody. You have to put up with it. If you love 
privacy, peace, and quiet, don't go to America on a 
lecturing tour. That is what your impresario will tell 
you. 

In each town where you go, you have .a local man- 
ager to " boss the show "; as he has to pay you a cer- 
tain fee, which he guarantees, you cannot find fault 
with him for doing his best to have a large audience. 
He runs risks ; you do not. Suppose, for instance, 
you are engaged, not by a society for a fee, but by a 
manager on sharing terms, say sixty per cent, of the 
gross receipts for you and forty for himself. Suppose 
his local expenses amount to $200 ; he has to bring 
$500 into the house before there is a cent for himself. 
You must forgive him if he goes about the place beat- 
ing the big drum. If you do not like it, there is a 
place where you can stay — home. 



An impresario once asked me if I required a piano, 
and if I would bring my own accompanist. Another 
wrote to ask the subject of my "entertainment." 




AS SANDY. 



Il 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



71 



I wrote back to say that my lecture was generally 
found entertaining, but that I objected to its being 
called an entertain- 
ment. I added that 
the lecture was com- 
posed of four character 
sketches, viz., John 
Bull, Sandy, Pat, and 
Jonathan. 

In his answer to this, 
he inquired whether I 
should change my dress 
four times during the 
performance, and 

U i-U •». 1J ». AS PAT. 

whether it would not 

be a good thing to have a little music during the 

intervals. 

Just fancy my appearing on the platform succes- 
sively dressed as John, Sandy, Pat, and Jonathan ! 




A good impresario is constantly^on the look out for 
anything that may draw the attention of the public to 
his entertainment. Nothing is sacred for him. His 
eyes and ears are always open, all his senses on the alert. 

One afternoon I was walking with my impresario 
over the beautiful Clifton Suspension Bridge. I was 
to lecture at the Victoria Hall, Bristol, in the evening. 
We leaned on the railings, and grew pensive as we 
looked at the scenery and the abyss under us. 

My impresario sighed. 

" What are you thinking about?" I said to him. 

" Last year," he replied, "a girl tried to commit sui- 




AS JONATHAN. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



73 



cide and jumped over this bridge ; but tlie wind got 
under her skirt, made a parachute of it, and she 




Tllli WOULD-BE SUICIDE. 

descended to the bottom of the valley perfectly un- 
hurt." 

And he sighed again. 

" Well," said I, " why do you sigh ? " 

"Ah ! my dear fellow, if you could do the same this 
afternoon, there would be 'standing room only' in the 
Victoria Hall to-night." 

I left that bridfre in no time. 



CHAPTER X. 

Buffalo — The Niagara Falls— A Frost — 
Rochester to the Rescue of Buffalo — Cleve- 
land — I Meet Jonathan — Phantasmagoria. 



Buffalo, January 14. 

THIS town is situated twenty-seven miles from 
Niagara Falls. The Americans say that the 
Buffalo people can hear the noise of the water-fall 
quite distinctly. I am quite prepared to believe it. 
However, an hour's journey by rail and then a quar- 
ter of an hour's sleigh ride will take you from Buffalo 
within sight of this, perhaps the grandest piece of 
scenery in the world. Words cannot describe it. You 
spend a couple of hours visiting every point of view. 
You are nailed, as it were, to the ground, feeling like 
a pigmy, awestruck in the presence of nature at her 
grandest. The snow was falling thickly, and though 
it made the view less clear, it added to the grandeur of 
the scene. 

I went down by the cable car to a level with the rapids 
and the place where poor Captain Webb was last seen 
alive ; a presumptuous pigmy, he, to dare such waters 
as these. His widow keeps a little bazaar near the 
falls and sells souvenirs to the visitors. 

It was most thrilling to stand within touching dis- 

74 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



75 



tance of that great torrent of water, called the Niag- 
ara Falls, in distinction to the Horseshoe Falls, to 
hear the roar of it as it fell. The idea of force it gives 
one is tremendous. You stand and wonder how many 
ages it has been roaring on, what eyes besides your 
own have gazed awestruck at its mighty rushing, and 




SHOOTING THE RAPIDS. 

wonder if the pigmies will ever do what they say 
they will ; one day make those columns of water 
their servants to turn wheels at their bidding. 

We crossed the bridge over to the Canadian side, 
and there we had the whole grand panorama before 
our eyes. 



76 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

It appears that it is quite a feasible thing to run the 
rapids in a barrel. Girls have done it, and it may be- 
come the fashionable sport for American girls in the 
near future. It has been safely accomplished plenty of 
times by young fellows up for an exciting day's sport. 

On the Canadian shore was a pretty villa where 
Princess Louise stayed while she painted the scene. 
Some of the pretty houses were fringed all round the 
roofs and balconies in the loveliest way, with icicles a 
yard long, and loaded with snow. They looked most 
beautiful. 

On the way back we called at Prospect House, a 
charming hotel which I hope, if ever I go near Buffalo 
again, I shall put up at for a day or two, to see the 
neighborhood well. 

Two years ago I was lucky enough to witness a 
most curious sight. The water was frozen under the 
falls, and a natural bridge, formed by the ice, was be- 
ing used by venturesome people to cross the Niagara 
River on. This occurs very seldom. 

I have had a fizzle to-night. I almost expected it. 
In a hall that could easily have accommodated fifteen 
hundred people, I lectured to an audience of about 
three hundred. Fortunately they proved so intelli- 
gent, warm, and appreciative that I did not feel at all 
depressed ; but my impresario did. However, he con- 
gratulated me on having been able to do justice to the 
causerie, as if I had had a bumper house. 

I must own that it is much easier to be a tragedian 
than a light comedian before a $200 house. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 77 

Cleveland, O., January 15. 

The weather is so bad that I shall be unable to see 
anything of this city, which, people tell me, is very 
beautiful. 

On arriving at the Weddell House, I met a New 
York friend. 

"Well," said he, "how are you getting on ? Where 
do you come from ? " 

" From Buffalo," said I, pulling a long face. 

"What is the matter? Don't you like the Buffalo 
people ? " 

"Yes; I liked those I saw. I should have liked to 
extend my love to a larger number. I had a fizzle; 
about three hundred people. Perhaps I drew all the 
brain of Buffalo." 

" How many people do you say you had in the 
hall?" said my friend, 

" About three hundred." 

"Then you must have drawn a good many people 
from Rochester, I should think," said he quite sol- 
emnly. 

In reading the Buffalo newspapers this morning, I 
noticed favorable criticisms of my lecture ; but while 
my English was praised, so far as the language went, 
severe comments were passed on my pronunciation. 
In England, where the English language is spoken 
with a decent pronunciation, I never once read a con- 
demnation of my pronunciation of the English lan- 
guage. 

I will not appear again in Buffalo until I feel much 
improved. 



78 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



Eh route to Pittsburg, January i6. 
The American railway stations have special waiting 
rooms for ladies — not, as in England, places furnished 
with looking-glasses, where they can go and arrange 




"going to PITTSBURG, I GUESS." 

their bonnets, etc. No, no. Places where they can 
wait for the trains, protected against the contamina- 
tion of man, and where they are spared the sight 
of that eternal little round piece of furniture with 



A FRENCHAfAN IN AMERICA. 79 

which the floors of the whole of the United States 
are dotted. 

At Cleveland Station, this morning, I met Jonathan, 
such as he is represented in the comic papers of the 
world. A man of sixty, with long straight white hair 
falling over his shoulders; no mustache, long imperial 
beard, a razor-blade-shaped nose, small keen eyes, and 
high prominent cheek-bones, the whole smoking the 
traditional cigar; the Anglo-Saxon indianized — Jona- 
than. If he had had a long swallow-tail coat on, a 
waistcoat ornamented with stars, and trousers with 
stripes, he might have sat for the cartoons of Puck or 
Judge. 

In the car, Jonathan came and sat opposite me. 
A few minutes after the train had started, he 
said : 

"Going to Pittsburg, I guess." 

"Yes," I replied. 

" To lecture ? " 

" Oh, you know I lecture ? " 

" Why, certainly ; I heard you in Boston ten days 
ago." 

He offered me a cigar, told me his name — I mean 
his three names — what he did, how much he earned, 
where he lived, how many children he had ; he read 
me a poem of his own composition, invited me to go 
and see him, and entertained me for three hours and a 
half, telling me the history of his life, etc. Indeed, it 
was Jonathan. 

All the Americans I have met have written a poem 
(pronounced pome). Now I am not generalizing. I 



8o A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

do not say that all the Americans have written a poem, 
I say all the A nier leans I have met. 

Pittsburg {same day later). 

I lecture here to-night under the auspices of the 
Press Club of the town. The president of the club 
came to meet me at the station, in order to show me 
something of the town. 

I like Pittsburg very much. From the top of the 
hill, which you reach in a couple of minutes by the cable 
car, there is a most beautiful sight to contemplate: 
one never to be forgotten. 

On our way to the hotel, my kind friend took me to 
a fire station, and asked the man in command of the 
place to go through the performance of a fire-call for 
my own edification. 

Now, in two words, here is the thing. 

You touch the fire bell in your own house. That 
causes the name of your street and the number of your 
house to appear in the fire station ; it causes all the 
doors of the station to open outward. Wait a min- 
ute — it causes whips which are hanging behind the 
horses, to lash them and send them under harnesses 
that fall upon them and are self-adjusting ; it causes 
the men, who are lying down on the first floor, to slide 
down an incline and fall on the box and steps of the 
cart. And off they gallop. It takes about two minutes 
to describe it as quickly as possible. It only takes 
fourteen seconds to do it. It is the nearest approach 
to phantasmagoria that I have yet seen in real life. 



CHAPTER XI. 

A Great Admirer — Notes on Railway Travel- 
ing — Is America a Free Nation? — A Pleas- 
ant Evening in New York. 



In the vestibule train from Pittsburg to New York, 
January 17. 

THIS morning, before leaving the hotel in Pitts- 
burg, I was approached by a young man who, 
after giving me his card, thanked me most earnestly 
for my lecture of last night. In fact, he nearly em- 
braced me. 

" I never enjoyed myself so much in my life," he 
said. 

I grasped his hand. 

" I am glad," I replied, " that my humble effort 
pleased you so much. Nothing is more gratifying to 
a lecturer than to know he has afforded pleasure to his 
audience." 

" Yes," he said, " it gave me immense pleasure. 
You see, I am engaged to be married to a girl in town. 
All her family went to your show, and I had the girl 
at home all to myself. Oh ! I had such a good time ! 
Thank you so much ! Do lecture here again soon." 

And, after wishing me a pleasant journey, he left 

81 



82 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

me. I was glad to know I left at least one friend and 
admirer behind me in Pittsburg. 

I had a charming audience last night, a large and 
most appreciative one. I was introduced by Mr. 
George H. Welshons, of the Pittsburg Times, in a neat 
little speech, humorous and very gracefully worded. 
After the lecture, I was entertained at supper in the 
rooms of the Press Club, and thoroughly enjoyed my- 
self with the members. As I entered the Club, I was 
amused to see two journalists, who had heard me at 
the. lecture discourse on chewing, go to a corner of the 
room, and there get rid of their wads, before coming 
to shake hands with me. 

If you have not journeyed in a vestibule train of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Company, you do not know 
what it is to travel in luxurious comfort. Dining 
saloon, drawing room, smoking room, reading room 
with writing tables, supplied with the papers and a 
library of books, all furnished with exquisite taste and 
luxury. The cooker}' is good and well served. 

The day has passed without adventures, but in com- 
fort. We left Pittsburg at seven in the morning. At 
nine we passed Johnstown. The terrible calamity that 
befell that city two years ago was before my mind's 
eye; the town suddenly inundated, the people rushing 
on the bridge, and there caught and burnt alive. 
America is the country for great disasters. Every- 
thing here is on a huge scale. Toward noon, the 
country grew hilly, and, for an hour before we reached 
Harrisburg, it gave me great enjoyment, for in Amer- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 83 

ica, where there is so much sameness in the land- 
scapes, it is a treat to see the mountains of Central 
Pennsylvania breaking the monotony of the huge flat 
stretch of land. 

The employees ( I must be careful not to say "ser- 
vants") of the Pennsylvania Railroad are polite and 
form an agreeable contrast to those of the other rail- 
way companies. Unhappily, the employees whom 
you find on board the Pullman cars are not in the con- 
trol of the company. 

The train will reach Jersey City for New York at 
seven to-night. I shall dine at my hotel. 

About 5.30 it occurred to me to go to the dining- 
room car and ask for a cup of tea. Before entering 
the car I stopped at the lavatory to wash my hands. 
Some one was using the basin. It was the conductor, 
the autocrat in charge of the dining car, a fat, sleek, 
chewing, surly, frowning, snarling cur. 

He turned round. 

** What do you want ? " said he. 

" I should very much like to wash my hands," I 
timidly ventured. 

" You see very well I am using the basin. You go 
to the next car." 

I came to America this time with a large provision 
of philosophy, and quite determined to even enjoy 
such little scenes as this. So I quietly went to the 
next lavatory, returned to the dining-car, and sat down 
at one of the tables. 

** Will you, please, give me a cup of tea?" I said to 
one of the colored waiters. 



84 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" I can't do dat, sah," said the negro. " You can have 
dinnah." 

" But I don't want dinnah," I replied ; " I want a cup 
of tea." 

" Den you must ask dat gem'man if you can have 
it," said he, pointing to the above mentioned "gentle- 
man." 

I went to him. 

"Excuse me," said I, "are you the nobleman who 
runs this show ? " 

He frowned. 

" I don't want to dine ; I should like to have a cup 
of tea." 

He frowned a little more, and deigned to hear my 
request to the end. 

" Can I ? " I repeated. 

He spoke not ; he brought his eyebrows still lower 
down, and solemnly shook his head. 

"Can't I really?" I continued. 

At last he spoke. 

" You can," quoth he, " for a dollar." 

And, taking the bill of fare in his hands, without 
wasting any more of his precious utterances, he pointed 
out to me : 

" Each meal one dollar." 

The argument was unanswerable. 

I went back to my own car, resumed my seat, and 
betook myself to reflection. 

What I cannot, for the life of me, understand is 
why, in a train which has a dining car and a kitchen, a 
man cannot be served with a cup of tea, unless he pays 
the price of a dinner for it, and this notwithstanding 




"well, what do you want?' 



86 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

the fact of his having paid five dollars extra to enjoy 
the extra luxury of this famous vestibule train. 

After all, this is one out of the many illustrations 
one could give to show that whatever Jonathan is, he 
is not the master in his own house. 

The Americans are the most docile people in the 
world. They are the slaves of their servants, whether 
these are high officials, or the " reduced duchesses" of 
domestic service. They are so submitted to their lot 
that they seem to find it quite natural. 

The Americans are lions governed by bull-dogs and 
asses. 

They have given themselves a hundred thousand 
masters, these folks who laugh at monarchies, for 
example, and scorn the rule of a king, as if it were 
better to be bullied by a crowd than by an individual. 

In America, the man who pays does not command 
the paid. I have already said it ; I will maintain the 
truth of the statement that, in America, the paid ser- 
vant rules. Tyranny from above is bad ; tyranny from 
below is worse. 

Of my many first impressions that have deepened into 
convictions, this is one of the firmest. 

When you arrive at an English railway station, all 
the porters seem to say : " Here is a customer, let us 
treat him well." And it is who shall relieve you of 
your luggage, or answer any questions you may be 
pleased to ask. They are glad to see you. 

In America, you may have a dozen parcels, not a 
hand will move to help you with them. So Jonathan 
is obliged to forego the luxury of hand baggage, so 
convenient for long journeys. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



87 



When you arrive at an American station, the officials 
are all frowning and seem to say : " Why the deuce 




ENGLISH RAILWAY STATION. 



don't you go to Chicago by some other line instead of 
coming here to bother us?" 

This subject reminds me of an interesting fact, told 
me by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew on board the Teutonic. 
When tram-cars were first used in the States, it was a 
long time before the drivers and conductors would 



88 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



consent to wear any kind of uniform, so great is the 
horror of anything like a badge of paid servitude. 

Now that they do wear 
some kind of uniform, 
they spend their time 
in standing sentry at 
the door of their dig- 
nity, and in thinking 
that, if they were po- 
lite, you would take 
their affable manners 
for servility. 

Everett House, 

Neiv York. 

{Midnight) 
So many charming 
houses have opened 
their hospitable doors 
to me in New York 
/y that, when I am in 
this city, I have soon 
forgotten the little an- 
noyances of a railway journey or the hardships of a 
lecture tour. 

After dining here, I went to spend the evening at 
the house of Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, the poet, and 
editor of the Century Magazine, that most success- 
ful of all magazines in the world. A circulation of 
nearly 300,000 copies — just think of it ! But it need 
not excite wonder in any one who knows this beauti- 
ful and artistic periodical, to which all the leading 




THE RAILWAY PORTER. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 89 

litterateurs of America lend their pens, and the best 
artists their pencils. 

Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder is one of the best and 
most genial hostesses in New York. At her Fridays, 
one meets the cream of intellectual society, the best 
known names of the American aristocracy of talent. 

To-night I met Mr. Frank R. Stockton, the novel- 
ist, Mr. Charles Webb, the humorist, Mr. Frank Mil- 
let, the painter, and his wife, and a galaxy of celebri- 
ties and beautiful women, all most interesting and 
delightful people to meet. Conversation went on 
briskly all over the rooms till late. 

The more I see of the American women, the more 
confirmed I become in my impression that they are 
typical ; more so than the men. They are like no 
other women I know. The brilliancy of their conver- 
sation, the animation of their features, the absence 
of afTectation in their manners, make them unique. 
There are no women to compare to them in a drawing- 
room. There are none with whom I feel so much at 
ease. Their beauty, physically speaking, is great ; 
but you are still more struck by their intellectual 
beauty, the frankness of their eyes, and the natural- 
ness of their bearing. 

I returned to the Everett House, musing all the way 
on the difference between the "American women and 
the women of France and England. The theme was 
attractive, and, remembering that to-morrow would be 
an off-day for me, I resolved to spend it in going more 
fully into this fascinating subject with pen and ink. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Notes on American Women — Comparisons — How 
Men Treat Women and Vice Versa— Scenes 
AND Illustrations. 



Neiv York, January i8. 

A MAN was one day complaining to a friend that 
he had been married twenty years without being 
able to understand his wife. "You should not com- 
plain of that," remarked the friend. " I have been mar- 
ried to my wife two years only, and I understand her 
perfectly." 

The leaders of thought in France have long ago pro- 
claimed that woman was the only problem it was not 
given to man to solve. They have all tried, and they 
have all failed. They all acknowledge it — but they 
are trying still. 

Indeed, the interest that woman inspires in every 
Frenchman is never exhausted. Parodying Terence, 
he says to himself, " I am a man, and all that concerns 
woman interests me." All the French modern novels 
are studies, analytical, dissecting studies, of woman's 
heart. 

To the Anglo-Saxon mind, this may sometimes ap- 
pear a trifle puerile, if not also ridiculous. But to un- 
derstand this feeling, one must remember how a 
Frenchman is brought up. 

go 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 91 

In England, boys and girls meet and play together; 
in America and Canada, they sit side by side on the 
same benches at school, not only as children of tender 
age, but at College and in the Universities. They get 
accustomed to each other's company ; they see noth- 
ing strange in being in contact with one another, and 
this naturally tends to reduce the interest or curiosity 
one sex takes in the other. But in France they are 
apart, and the ball-room is the only place where they 
can meet when they have attained the age of twenty! 

Strange to reflect that young people of both sexes 
can meet in ball-rooms without exciting their 
parents' suspicions, and that they cannot do so in 
class-rooms ! 

When I was a boy at school in France, I can well re- 
member how we boys felt on the subject. If we heard 
that a young girl, say the sister of some school-fellow, 
was with her mother in the common parlor to see her 
brother, why, it created a commotion, a perfect revo- 
lution in the whole establishment. It was no use try- 
ing to keep us in order. We would climb on the top 
of the seats or of the tables to endeavor to see some- 
thing of her, even if it were but the top of her hat, or 
a bit of her gown across the recreation yard at the very 
end of the building. It was an event. Many of us 
would even immediately get inspired and compose 
verses addressed to the unknown fair visitor. In these 
poetical effusions we would imagine the young girl 
carried off by some miscreant, and we would fly to her 
rescue, save her, and throw ourselves at her feet to re- 
ceive her hand as our reward. Yes, we would get quite 
romantic or, in plain English, quite silly. We could 



92 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

not imagine that a woman was a reasoning being with 
whom you can talk on the topics of the day, or have 
an ordinary conversation on any ordinary subject. To 
us a woman was a being with whom you can only talk 
of love, or fall in love, or, maybe, for whom you may 
die of love. 

This manner of training young men goes a long way 
toward explaining the position of woman in France as 
well as her ways. It explains why a Frenchman and 
a Frenchwoman, when they converse together, seldom 
can forget that one is a man and the other a woman. 
It does not prove that a Frenchwoman must neces- 
sarily be, and is, affected in her relations with men ; 
but it explains why she does not feel, as the American 
woman does, that a man and woman can enjoy a tete-h- 
tete free from all those commonplace flatteries, compli- 
ments, and platitudes that badly-understood gallantry 
suggests. Many American ladies have made me for- 
get, by the easiness of their manner and the charm and 
naturalness of their conversation, that I was speak- 
ing with women, and with lovely ones, too. This I 
could never have forgotten in the company of French 
ladies. 

On account of this feeling, and perhaps also of the 
difference which exists between the education received 
by a man and that received by a woman in France, 
the conversation will always be on some light topics, 
literary, artistic, dramatic, social, or other. Indeed, it 
would be most unbecoming for a man to start a very 
serious subject of conversation with a French lady to 
whom he had just been introduced. He would be 
taken for a pedant or a man of bad breeding. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 93 

In America, men and women receive practically 
the same education, and this of course enlarges the 
circle of conversation between the sexes. I shall 
always remember a beautiful American girl, not more 
than twenty years of age, to whom I was once intro- 
duced in New York, as she was giving to a lady sitting 
next to her a most detailed description of the latest 
bonnet invented in Paris, and who, turning toward me, 
asked me point-blank if I had read M, Ernest Renan's 
" History of the People of Israel." I had to confess 
that I had not yet had time to read it. But she had, 
and she gave me, without the remotest touch of affec- 
tation or pedantry, a most interesting and learned 
analysis of that remarkable work. I related this in- 
cident in "Jonathan and his Continent." On reading 
it, some of my countrymen, critics and others, ex- 
claimed : " We imagine the fair American girl had a 
pair of gold spectacles on." 

" No, my dear compatriots, nothing of the sort. No 
gold spectacles, no guy. It was a beautiful girl, 
dressed with most exquisite taste and care, and most 
charming and womanly." 

An American woman, however learned she may be, 
is a sound politician, and she knows that the best 
thing she can make of herself is a woman, and she re- 
mains a woman. She will always make herself as 
attractive as she possibly can. Not to please men — I 
believe she has a great contempt for them — but to 
please herself. If, in a French drawing-room, I were 
to remark to a lady how clever some woman in the 
room looked, she would probabl}'' closely examine that 
woman's dress to find out what I thought was wrong 



94 ■ A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

about it. It would probably be the same in England, 
but not in America. 

A Frenchwoman will seldom be jealous of another 
woman's cleverness. She will far more readily forgive 
her this qualification than beauty. And in this par- 
ticular point, it is probable that the Frenchwoman 
resembles all the women in the Old World. 

Of all the ladies I have met, I have no hesitation in 
declaring that the American ones are the least affected. 
With them, I repeat it, I feel at ease as I do with no 
other women in the world. 

With whom but an Ame'ricaine would the following 
little scene have been possible ? 

I was in Boston. It was Friday, and knowing it to 
be the reception day of Mrs. X., an old friend of mine 
and my wife's, I thought I would call upon her early, 
before the crowd of visitors had begun to arrive. So I 
went to the house about half-past three in the after- 
noon. Mrs. X. received me in the drawing-room, and 
we were soon talking on the hundred and one topics 
that old friends have on their tongue tips. Presently 
the conversation fell on love and lovers. Mrs. X. 
drew her chair up a little nearer to the fire, put the 
toes of her little slippers on the fender stool, and with 
a charmingly confidential, but perfectly natural, man- 
ner, said: 

" You are married and love your wife ; I am married 
and love my husband ; we are both artists, let's have 
our say out." 

And we proceeded to have our say out. 

But all at once I noticed that about half an inch of the 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 95 

seam of her black silk bodice was unsewn. We men, 
when we see a lady with something awry in her toi- 
lette, how often do we long to say to her: " Excuse 
me, madam, but perhaps you don't know that you 
have a hairpin sticking out two inches just behind 
your ear," or " Pardon me. Miss, I'm a married man, 
there is something wrong there behind, just under 
your waist belt." 

Now I felt for Mrs. X., who was just going to receive 
a crowd of callers with a little rent in one of her bodice 
seams, and tried to persuade myself to be brave and 
tell her of it. Yet I hesitated. People take things so 
differently. The conversation went on unflagging. 
At last I could not stand it any longer. 

" Mrs. X.," said I, all in a breath, "you are married 
and love your husband ; I am married and love my 
wife; we are both artists ; there is a little bit of seam 
come unsewn, just there by your arm, run and get it 
sewn up ! " 

The peals of laughter that I heard going on up- 
stairs, while the damage was being repaired, proved 
to me that there was no resentment to be feared, but, 
on the contrary, that I had earned the gratitude of 
Mrs. X. 

In many respects I have often been struck with the 
resemblance which exists between French and Ameri- 
can women. When I took my first walk on Broadway, 
New York, on a fine afternoon some two years and 
a half ago, I can well remember how I exclaimed : 
" Why, this is Paris, and all these ladies are Parisi- 
ennes ! " It struck me as being the same type of face, 



9<5 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

the same animation of features, the same brightness of 
the eyes, the same self-assurance, the same attractive 
plumpness in women over thirty. To my mind, I was 
having a walk on my own Boulevards (every Parisian 
oivns that place). The more I became acquainted with 
American ladies, the more forcibly this resemblance 
struck me. This was not a mere first impression. It 
has been, and is still, a deep conviction ; so much so 
that whenever I returned to New York from a journey 
of some weeks in the heart of the country, I felt as if 
I was returning home. 

After a short time, a still closer resemblance between 
the women of the two countries will strike a French- 
man most forcibly. It is the same finesse, the same 
suppleness of mind, the same wonderful adaptability. 
Place a little French milliner in a good drawing-room 
for an hour, and at the end of that time she will be- 
have, talk, and walk like any lady in the room. Sup- 
pose an American, married below his status in society, 
is elected President of the United States, I believe, at 
the end of a week, this wife of his would do the honors 
of the White House with the ease and grace of a high- 
born lady. 

In England it is just the contrary. 

Of course good society is good society everywhere. 
The ladies of the English aristocracy are perfect 
queens ; but the Englishwoman, who was not born a 
lady, will seldom become a lady, and I believe this is 
why me'salliances are more scarce in England than in 
America, and especially in France. I could name 
many Englishmen at the head of their professions, 
who cannot produce their wives in society because 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. g^ 

these women have not been able to raise themselves to 
the level of their husbands' station in life. The 
Englishwoman, as a rule, has no faculty for fitting her- 
self for a higher position than the one she was born 
in ; like a rabbit, she will often taste of the cabbage 
she fed on. And I am bound to add that this is per- 
haps a quality, and proves the truthfulness of her 
character. She is no actress. 

In France, the inhalliance, though not relished by 
parents, is not feared so much, because they know the 
young woman will observe and study, and very soon 
fit herself for her new position. 

And while on this subject of mesalliance, why not 
try to destroy an absurd prejudice that exists in almost 
every country on the subject of France? 

It is, I believe, the firm conviction of foreigners that 
Frenchmen marry for money, that is to say, that all 
Frenchmen marry for money. As a rule, when people 
discuss foreign social topics, they have a wonderful 
faculty for generalization. 

The fact that many Frenchman do marry for money 
is not to be denied, and the explanation of it is this : 
We have in France a number of men belonging to a 
class almost unknown in other countries, small bour- 
geois of good breeding and genteel habits, but rela- 
tively poor, who occupy posts in the different Govern- 
ment offices. Their name is legion and their salary 
something like two thousand francs ($400). These men 
have an appearance to keep up, and, unless a wife 
brings them enough to at least double their income, 
they cannot marry. These young men are often sought 
after by well-to-do parents for their daughters, because 



98 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

they are steady, cultured, gentlemanly, and occupy an 
honorable position, which brings them a pension for 
their old age. With the wife's dowry, the couple can 
easily get along, and lead a peaceful, uneventful, and 
happy jog-trot life, which is the great aim of the 
majority of the French people. 

But, on the other hand, there is no country where 
you will see so many cases of mesalliance 2i?> France, and 
this alone should dispose of the belief that Frenchmen 
marry for money. Indeed, it is a most common thing 
for a young Frenchman of good family to fall in love 
with a girl of a much lower station of life than his own, 
to court her, at first with perhaps only the idea of kill- 
ing time or of starting a liaison, to soon discover that 
the girl is highly respectable, and to finally marry her. 
This is a most common occurrence, French parents 
frown on this sort of thing, and do their best to dis- 
courage it, of course ; but rather than cross their son's 
love, they give their consent, and trust to that adapt- 
ability of Frenchwomen, of which I was speaking just 
now, to raise herself to her husband's level and make a 
wife he will never be ashamed of. 

The Frenchman is the slave of his womankind, but 
not in the same way as the American is. The French- 
man is brought up by his mother, and remains under 
her sway till she dies. When he marries, his wife 
leads him by the nose (an operation which he seems to 
enjoy), and when, besides, he has a daughter, on whom 
he generally dotes, this lady soon joins the other two 
in ruling this easy-going, good-humored man. As a 
rule, when you see a Frenchman, you behold a man 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 99 

who is kept in order by three generations of women : 
mother, wife, and daughter. 

The American will lavish attention and luxury on 
his wife and daughters, but he will save them the 
trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His business is 
his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun 
and glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to 
enjoy as soon as he can throw away the cares of his 
business. In France, a wife is a partner, a cashier who 
takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock and 
speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both 
cashier and bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France, 
Paris included, and behind '* Pay Here," you will see 
Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money 
for the purchase you have made. When I said she 
is a partner, I might safely have said that she is the 
active partner, and, as a rule, by far the shrewder of 
the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness, 
her fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and 
many a customer whom her husband was allowing to go 
away without a purchase, has been brought back by the 
wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop. 
Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Ger- 
many, to spend a few days visiting the Exposition. 
One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards to buy a 
white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats 
which the man showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and 
I declined to buy one. I was just going to leave, 
when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened 
to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and 
said: " But, Adolphe, why do you let Monsieur go? 
Perhaps he does not care to follow the fashion. We 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



have a few white brocte-brimmed hats left from last 
year that we can let Monsieur have a bon compte. 
They are upstairs, go and fetch them." And, sure 




MADAM IS THE CASHIER 



enough, there wa§ one which fitted and pleased me, and 
I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs, 
which the husband was going to let me take elsewhere, 
but which the wife managed to secure for the firm. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. loi 

No one who has lived in France has failed to be 
struck with the intelligence of the women, and there 
exist few Frenchmen who do not readily admit how in- 
tellectually inferior they are to their countrywomen, 
chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this 
is not due to any special training, for the education re- 
ceived by the women of that class is of the most limit- 
ed kind ; they are taught to read, write, and reckon, 
and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn 
in them, as well as a peculiar talent for getting a hun- 
dred cents' worth for every dollar they spend. How to 
make a house look pretty and attractive with small out- 
lay ; how to make a dress or turn out a bonnet with a 
few knick-knacks ; how to make a savory dish out of a 
small remnant of beef, mutton, and veal ; all that is a 
science not to be despised when a husband, in receipt 
of a four or five hundred dollar salary, wants to make a 
good dinner, and see his wife look pretty. No doubt 
the aristocratic inhabitants of Mayfair and Belgravia in 
London, and the plutocracy of New York, may think 
all this very small, and these French people very unin- 
teresting. They can, perhaps, hardly imagine that such 
people may live on such incomes and look decent. But 
they do live, and live very happy lives, too. And I 
will go so far as to say that happiness, real happiness, 
is chiefly found among people of limited income. The 
husband, who perhaps for a whole year has put quietly 
by a dollar every week, so as to be able to give his 
dear wife a nice present at Christmas, gives her a lar 
more valuable, a far better appreciated present, than 
the millionaire who orders Tiffany to send a diamond 
riviere to his wife. That quiet young French couple, 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 




whom you see at the upper circle of a theater, and who 
have saved the money to enable them to come and hear 
such and such a play, are happier than the occupants 

^j^ of the boxes on 

the first tier. If 
you doubt it, 
take your opera 
-_ glasses, and 
" look on this 
picture, and on 
this." 

In observing 
nations, I have 
always taken 
more interest in 
the " million," 
who differ in 
every country, than in the " upper ten," who are alike 
all over the world. People who have plenty of money 
at their disposal generally discover the same way of 
spending it, and adopt the same mode of living. 
People who have only a small income show their 
native instincts in the intelligent use of it. All these 
differ, and these only are worth studying, unless you 
belong to the staff of a "society" paper. (As a 
Frenchman, I am glad to say we have no "society" 
papers. England and America are the only two 
countries in the world where these official organs of 
Anglo-Saxon snobbery can be found, ai.d I should not 
be surprised to hear that Australia possessed some of 
these already.) 



THE UPPER CIRCLE. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



103 



The source of French happiness is to be found in 
the thrift of the wonnen, from the best middle class to 
the peasantry. This thrift is also the source of French 
wealth. A nation is really wealthy when the fortunes 
are stable, however small. We have no railway kings, 




THE SAD-EYED OCCUPANTS OF THE BOX. 

no oil kings, no silver kings, but we have no tenement 
houses, no Unions, no Work-houses. Our lower classes 
do not yet ape the upper class people, either in their 
habits or dress. The wife of a peasant or of a mechanic 
wears a simple snowy cap, and a serge or cotton dress. 



104 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

The wife of a shopkeeper does not wear any jewelry 
because she cannot afford to buy real stones, and her 
taste is too good to allow of her wearing false ones. 
She is not ashamed of her husband's occupation ; she 
does not play the fine lady while he is at work. She 
saves him the expense of a cashier or of an extra clerk 
by helping him in his business. When the shutters 
are up, she enjoys life with him, and is the companion 
of his pleasures as well as of his hardships. Club life 
is unknown in France, except among the upper classes. 
Man and wife are constantly together, and France is a 
nation of Darbys and Joans. There is, I believe, no 
country where men and women go through life on such 
equal terms as in France. 

In England (and here again I speak of the masses 
only), the man thinks himself a much superior being to 
the woman. It is the same in German)\ In America, 
I should feel inclined to believe that a woman looks 
down upon a man with a certain amount of contempt. 
She receives at his hands attentions of all sorts, but I 
cannot say, as I have remarked before, that I have ever 
discovered in her the slightest trace of gratitude to 
man. 

I have often tried to explain to myself this gentle 
contempt of American ladies for the male sex; for, con- 
trasting it with the lovely devotion of Jonathan to his 
womankind, it is a curious enigma. Have I found the 
solution at last? Does it begin at school? In Ameri- 
can schools, boys and girls, from the age of five, follow 
the same path to learning, and sit side by side on the 
same benches. Moreover, the girls prove themselves 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 105 

capable of keeping pace with the boys. Is it not pos- 
sible that those girls, as they watched the perform- 
ances of the boys in the study, learned to say, " Is 
that all?" While the young lords of creation, as they 
have looked on at what " those girls " can do, have 
been fain to exclaim: "Who would have thought it!" 
And does not this explain the two attitudes: the* great 
respect of men for women, and the mild contempt of 
women for men ? 

Very often, in New York, when I had time to saunter 
about, I would go up Broadway and wait until a car, 
well crammed with people, came along. Then I would 
jump on board and stand near the door. Whenever a 
man wanted to get out, he would say to me " Please," 
or " Excuse me," or just touch me lightly to warn me 
that I stood in his way. But the women ! Oh, the 
women ! why, it was simply lovely. They would just 
push me away with the tips of their fingers, and turn 
up such disgusted and haughty noses! You would 
have imagined it was a heap of dirty rubbish in their 
way. 



Would you have a fair illustration of the respective 
positions of woman in France, in England, and in 
America ? 

Go to a hotel, and watch the arrival of couples in 
the dining-room. 

Now don't go to the Louvre, the Grand Hotel, or 
the Bristol, in Paris. Don't go to the Savoy, the 
Victoria, or the Metropole, in London. Don't go to 
the Brunswick, in New York, because in all these hotels 



io6 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



you will see that all behave alike. Go elsewhere and, 
I say, watch. 

In France, you will see the couples arrive together, 
walk abreast toward the table assigned to them, very 




IN FRANCE. 



often arm in arm, and smiling at each other — though 
married. 

In England, you will see John Bull leading the way. 
He does not like to be seen eating in public, and 
thinks it very hard that he should not have the dining- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



107 



room all to himself. So he enters, with his hands in 
his pockets, looking askance at everybody right and 




IN ENGLAND. 



left. Then, meek and demure, with her eyes cast down, 
follows Mrs. John Bull. 

In America, behold the dignified, nay, the majestic 
entry of Mrs. Jonathan, a perfect queen going toward 
her throne, bestowing a glance on her subjects right 
and left — and Jonathan behind ! 




IN AMERICA. 



^ 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



109 



They say in France that Paris is the paradise of 
women. If so, there is a more blissful place than 
paradise; there is another word to invent to give an 
idea of the social position enjoyed by American ladies. 

If I had to be born again, and mi^it choose my sex 
and my birthplace, I would shout at the top of my 
voice : 

•" Oh, make me an American woman ! " 




CHAPTER XIII. 

More about Journalism in America — A Dinner 
AT Delmonico's — My First Appearance in an 
American Church. 



Netv York, Sunday Night, January 19. 

HAVE been spending the whole day in reading 
the Sunday papers. 

I am never tired of reading and studying the Ameri- 
can newspapers. The whole character of the nation 
is there : Spirit of enterprise, liveliness, childishness, 
inquisitiveness, deep interest in everything that is 
human, fun and humor, indiscretion, love of gossip, 
brightness. 

Speak of electric light, of phonographs and grapho- 
phones, if you like ; speak of those thousand and one 
inventions which have come out of the American 
brain ; but if you wish to mention the greatest and 
most wonderful achievement of American activity, 
do not hesitate for a moment to give the palm to 
American journalism ; it is simply the ne plus ultra. 

You will find some people, even in America, who 
condemn its loud tone ; others who object to its med- 
dling with private life ; others, again, who have some- 
thing to say of its contempt for statements which are 
not in perfect accordance with strict truth. I even 
believe that a French writer, whom I do not wish to 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. Ill 

name, once said that very few statements to be found 
in an American paper were to be relied upon — beyond 
the date. People may say this and may say that 
about American journalism ; I confess that I like it, 
simply because it will supply you with twelve — on 
Sundays with thirty — pages that are readable from 
the first line to the last. Yes, from the first line to 
the last, including the advertisements. 

The American journalist may be a man of letters, 
but, above all, he must possess a bright and graphic 
pen, and his services are not wanted if he cannot write 
a racy article or paragraph out of the most trifling in- 
cident. He must relate facts, if he can, but if he can- 
not, so much the worse for the facts ; he must be 
entertaining and turn out something that is readable. 

Suppose, for example, a reporter has to send to his 
paper the account of a police-court proceeding. There 
is nothing more important to bring to the ofifice than 
the case of a servant girl who has robbed her mistress 
of a pair of diamond earrings. The English reporter 
will bring to his editor something in the following 
style : 

Mary Jane So-and-So was yesterday charged before the magis- 
trate with stealing a pair of diamond earrings from her mistress. 
It appears [always // appears, that is the formula] that, last Mon- 
day, as Mrs. X. went to her room to dress for dinner, she missed a 
pair of diamond earrings, which she usually kept in a h'ttle drawer 
in her bedroom. On questioning her maid on the subject, she re- 
ceived incoherent answers. Suspicion that the maid was the thief 
arose in her mind, and 

A long paragraph in this dry style will be published 
in the Times, or any other London morning paper. 



112 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

Now, the American* reporter will be required to 
bring something a little more entertaining if he hopes 
to be worth his salt on the staff of his paper, and he 
will probably get up an account of the case somewhat 
in the following fashion : 

Mary Jane So-and-so is a pretty little brunette of some twenty 
summers. On looking in the glass at her dainty little ears, she 
fancied how lovely a pair of diamond earrings would look in them. 
So one day she thought she would try on those of her mistress. 
How lovely she looked ! said the looking-glass, and the Mephi- 
stopheles that is hidden in the corner of every man or woman's 
breast suggested that she should keep them. This is how Mary 
Jane found herself in trouble, etc., etc. 

The whole will read like a little story, probably en- 
titled something like " Another Gretchen gone wrong 
through the love of jewels." 

The heading has to be thought of no less than the 
paragraph. Not a line is to be dull in a paper spark- 
ling all over with eye-ticklers of all sorts. Oh ! those 
delicious headings that would resuscitate the dead, and 
make them sit up in their graves ! 

A Tennessee paper which I have now under my eyes 
announces the death of a townsman with the following 
heading : 

" At ten o'clock last night Joseph W. Nelson put on 
his angel plumage." 

" Racy, catching advertisements supplied to the 
trade," such is the announcement that I see in the 
same paper. I understand the origin of such literary 
productions as the following, which I cull from a Colo- 
rado sheet : 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. II3 

This morning our Saviour summoned away the jeweler WilHam 
T. Sumner, of our city, from his shop to another and a better 
world. The undersigned, his widow, will weep upon his tomb, as 
will also his two daughters, Maud and Emma, the former of whom 
is married, and the other is open to an offer. The funeral will 
take place to-morrow. Signed. His disconsolate widow, Mathilda 
Sumner. 

P. S. — This bereavement will not interrupt our business, which 
will be carried on as usual, only our place of business will be re- 
moved from Washington Street to No. 17 St. Paul Street, as our 
grasping landlord has raised our rent. — M. S. 

The following advertisement probably emanates 
from the same firm : 

Personal — His Love Suddenly Returned. — Recently 
they had not been on the best of terms, owing to a little family jar 
occasioned by the wife insisting on being allowed to renovate his 
wearing apparel, and which, of course, was done in a bungling 
manner; in order to prevent the trouble, they agreed to send all 
their work hereafter toD., the tailor, and now everything is lovely, 
and peace and happiness again reign in their household. 

All this is lively. Never fail to read the advertise- 
ments of an American paper, or you will not have got 
out of it all the fun it supplies. 

Here are a few from the Cincinnati Enquirer, which 
tell different stories: 

I. The young Madame J. C. Antonia, just arrived from 
Europe, will remain a short time; tells past, present, and future; 
tells by the letters in hand who the future husband orwife will be; 
brings back the husband or lover in so many days, and guarantees 
to settle family troubles; can give good luck and success; ladies 
call at once; also cures corns and bunions. Hours 10 A. M. and 
9 P. M. 

" Also cures corns and bunions " is a poem ! 



114 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

2. The acquaintance desired of lady passing along Twelfth 
Street at three o'clock Sunday afternoon, by blond gent standing 
at corner. Address Lou K., 48, Enquz'rer Office. 

3. Will the three ladies that got on the electric car at the Zoo 
Sunday afternoon favor three gents that got of? at Court and Wal- 
nut Streets with their address .'' Address ELECTRIC CAR, En- 
quirer Office. 

4. Will two ladies on Clark Street car, that noticed two gents 
in front of Grand Opera House about seven last evening, please 
address Jands, Eiiquirer Office. 

A short time ago a man named Smith was bitten by 
a rattlesnake and treated with whisky at a New York 
hospital. An English paper would have just men- 
tioned the fact, and have the paragraph headed : " A 
Remarkable Cure"; or, "A Man Cured of a Rattle- 
snake Bite by Whisky " ; but a kind correspondent 
sends me the headings of this bit of intelligence in five 
New York papers. They are as follows : 

1. "Smith Is All Right!" 

2. " Whisky Does It ! " 

3. "The Snake Routed at all Points!" 

4. " The Reptile is Nowhere ! " 

5. " Drunk for Three Days and Cured." 

Let a batch of officials be dismissed. Do not sup- 
pose that an American editor will accept the news 
with such a heading as " Dismissal of Officials." The 
reporter will have to bring some label that will fetch 
the attention. " Massacre at the Custom House," or, 
" So Many Heads in the Basket," will do. Now, I 
maintain that it requires a wonderful imagination — 
something little short of genius, to be able, day after 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



"5 



day, to hit on a hundred of such headings. But the 
American journalist does it. 

An American paper is a collection of short stories. 
The Sunday edition of the New York World, the 
New York Herald, the Boston Herald, the Boston 




SMITH CURED OF RATTLESNAKE BITE.. 

Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Herald, and 
many others, is something like ten volumes of miscel- 
laneous literature, and I do not know of any achieve- 
ment to be^ompared to it. 

I cannot do better than compare an American 
paper to a large store, where the goods, the articles, 
are labeled so as to immediately strike the customer. 



Il6 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

A few days ago, I heard my friend, Colonel Charles 
H. Taylor, editor of the Boston Globe, give an inter- 
esting summary of an address on journalism which he 
is to deliver next Saturday before the members of the 
New England Club of Boston. He maintained that the 
proprietor of a newspaper has as much right to make 
his shop-window attractive to the public as any trades- 
man. If the colonel is of opinion that journalism 
is a trade, and the journalist a mere tradesman, I agree 
with him. If journalism is not to rank among the 
highest and noblest of professions, and is to be noth- 
ing more than a commercial enterprise, I agree with 
him. 

Now, if we study the evolution of journalism for the 
last forty or fifty years, we shall see that daily journal- 
ism, especially in a democracy, has become a commer- 
cial enterprise, and that journalism, as it was understood 
forty years ago, has become to-day monthly journalism. 
The dailies have now no other object than to give the 
news — the latest — just as a tradesman that would suc- 
ceed must give you the latest fashion in any kind of 
business. The people of a democracy like America are 
educated in politics. They think for themselves, and 
care but little for the opinions of such and such a jour- 
nalist on any question of public interest. They want 
news, not literary essays on news. When I hear some 
Americans say that they object to their daily journal- 
ism, I answer that journalists are like other people who 
supply the public — they keep the article that is 
wanted. 

A free country possesses the government it deserves, 
and the journalism it wants. A people active and 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 1 1? 

busy as the Americans are, want a journalism that will 
keep their interest awake and amuse them ; and they 
naturally get it. The average American, for example, 
cares not a pin for what his representatives say or 
do in Washington ; but he likes to be acquainted with 
what is going on in Europe, and that is why the 
American journalist will give him a far more detailed 
account of what is going on in the Palace at West- 
minster than of what is being said in the Capitol. 

In France, journalism is personal. On any great 
question of the day, domestic or foreign, the French- 
man will want to read the opinion of John Lemoinne 
in \\\Q Joicr7ial des Debats, or the opinion of Edouard 
Lockroy in the Rappel, or maybe that of Paul de 
Cassagnac or Henri Rochefort. Every Frenchman is 
more or less led by the editor of the newspaper which 
he patronizes. But the Frenchman is only a democrat 
in name and aspirations, not in fact. France made 
the mistake of establishing a republic before she made 
republicans of her sons. A French journalist signs 
his articles, and is a leader of public opinion, so much 
so that every successful journalist in France has been, 
is now, and ever will be, elected a representative of 
the people. 

In America, as in England, the journalist has no 
personality outside the literary classes. Who, among 
the masses, knows the names of Bennett, Dana, White- 
law Reid, Medill, Childs, in the United States? Who, 
in England, knows the names of Lawson, Mudford, 
Robinson, and other editors of the great dailies? If 
it had not been for his trial and imprisonment, Mr. W. 
T. Stead himself, though a most brilliant journalist, 



Ii8 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

would never have seen his name on anybody's 
lips. 

A leading article in an American or an English 
newspaper will attract no notice at home. It will 
only be quoted on the European Continent. 

It is the monthly and the weekly papers and maga- 
zines that now play the part of the dailies of bygone 
days. An article in the Spectator or Saturday Review, 
or especially in one of the great monthly magazines, 
will be quoted all over the land, and I believe that 
this relatively new journalism, which is read only by 
the cultured, has now for ever taken the place of the 
old one. 

In a country where everybody reads, men as Avell 
as women ; in a country where nobody takes much 
interest in politics outside of the State and the city in 
which he lives, the journalist has to turn out every 
day all the news he can gather, and present them to 
the reader in the most readable form. Formerly daily 
journalism was a branch of literature ; now it is a 
news store, and is so not only in America. The Eng- 
lish press shows signs of the same tendency, and so 
does the Parisian press. Take the London Pall Mall 
Gazette and Star, and the Paris Figaro, as illustrations 
of what I advance. 

As democracy makes progress in England, journalism 
will become more and more American, although the 
English reporter will have some trouble in succeeding 
to compete with his American confrlre in humor and 
liveliness. 

Under the guidance of political leaders, the news- 
papers of Continental Europe direct public opinion. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 119 

In a democracy, the newspapers follow public opinion 
and cater to the public taste ; they are the servants of 
the people. The American says to his journalists : " I 
don't care a pin for your opinions on such a question. 
Give me the news and I will comment on it myself. 
Only don't forget that I am an overworked man, and 
that before, or after, my fourteen hours' work, I want 
to be entertained." 

So, as I have said elsewhere, the American journalist 
must be spicy, lively, and bright. He must know 
how, not merely to report, but to relate in a racy, 
catching style, an accident, a trial, a conflagration, and 
be able to make up an article of one or two columns 
upon the most insignificant incident. He must be 
interesting, readable. His eyes and ears must be 
always open, every one of his five senses on the alert, 
for he must keep ahead in this wild race for news. 
He must be a good conversationalist on most subjects, 
so as to bring back from his interviews with different 
people a good store of materials. He must be a man 
of courage, to brave rebuffs. He must be a philos- 
opher, to pocket abuse cheerfully. 

He must be a man of honor, to inspire confidence 
in the people he has to deal with. Personally I can 
say this of him, that wherever I have begged him, for 
instance, to kindly abstain from mentioning this or. 
that which might have been said in conversation 
with him, I have invariably found that he kept his 
word. 

But if the matter is of public interest, he is, before 
and above all, the servant of the public ; so, never 
challenge his spirit of enterprise, or he will leave no 



I20 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

stone unturned until he has found out your secret and 
exhibited it in public. 

I do not think that American journalism needs an 
apology. 

It is the natural outcome of circumstances and the 
democratic times we live in. The Th^atre-Frangais is 
not now, under a Republic, and probably never again 
will be, what it was when it was placed under the pat- 
ronage and supervision of the French Court. Democ- 
racy is the form of government least of all calculated to 
foster literature and the fine arts. To that purpose, 
• Monarchy, with its Court and its fashionable society, 
is the best. This is no reason to prefer a monarchy to 
a republic. Liberty, like any other luxury, has to be 
paid for. 

Journalism cannot be now what it was when papers 
were read by people of culture. In a democracy, the 
stage and journalism have to please the masses of the 
people. As the people become better and better edu- 
cated, the stage and journalism will rise with them. 
What the people want, I repeat it, is news, and jour- 
nals are properly called news papers. 

Speaking of American journalism, no man need use 
apologetic language. 

Not when the proprietor of an American paper will 
not hesitate to spend thousands of dollars to provide 
his readers with the minutest details about some great 
European event. 

Not when an American paper will, at its own expense, 
send Henry M. Stanley to Africa in search of Living- 
stone. 

Not so long as the American press is vigilant, and 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. I2i 

keeps its thousand eyes open on the interests of the 
American people. 

• • • • • 

Midnight. 

Dined this evening with Richard Mansfield at Del- 
monico's. I sat between Mr. Charles A. Dana, the 
first of American journalists, and General Horace Por- 
ter, and had what my American friends would call " a 
mighty elegant time." The host was delightful, the 
dinner excellent, the wine "extra dry," the speeches 
quite the reverse. " Speeches " is rather a big word 
for what took place at dessert. Every one supplied an 
anecdote, a story, a reminiscence, and contributed to 
the general entertainment of the guests. 

The Americans have too much humor to spoil their 
dinners with toasts to the President, the Senate, the 
House of Representatives, the army, the navy, the 
militia, the volunteers, and the reserved forces. 

I once heard Mr. Chauncey M. Depew referring to 
the volunteers, at some English public dinner, as " men 
invincible — in peace, and invisible — in war." After 
dinner I remarked to an English peer : 

" You have heard to-night the great New York after- 
dinner speaker; what do you think of his speech? " 

" Well," he said, " it was witty ; but I think his 
remark about our volunteers was not in very good 
taste." 

I remained composed, and did not burst. 

Nezvbiirgh, N. Y., January 21. 
I lectured in Melrose, near Boston, last night, and 



122 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

had the satisfaction of pleasing a Massachusetts audi- 
ence for the second time. After the lecture, I had 
supper with Mr. Nat Goodwin, a very good actor, who 
is now playing in Boston in a new play by Mr. Steele 
Mackaye. Mr. Nat Goodwin told many good stories 
at supper. He can entertain his friends in private as 
well as he can the public. 



To-night I have appeared in a church, in Newburgh. 
The minister, who took the chair, had the good sense 
to refrain from opening the lecture with prayer. There 
are many who have not the tact necessary to see that 
praying before a humorous lecture is almost as irrever- 
ent as praying before a glass of grog. It is as an artist, 
however, that I resent that prayer. After the audience 
have said Amen, it takes them a full quarter of an hour 
to realize that the lecture is not a sermon ; that they 
are in a church, but not at church ; and the whole 
time their minds are in that undecided state, all 
your points fall flat and miss fire. Even without the 
preliminary prayer, I dislike lecturing in a church. 
The very atmosphere of a church is against the suc- 
cess of a light, humorous lecture, and many a point, 
which would bring down the house in a theater, will be 
received only with smiles in a lecture hall, and in re- 
spectful silence in a church. An audience is greatly 
influenced by surroundings. 

Now, I must say that the interior of an American 
church, with its lines of benches, its galleries, and its 
platform, does not inspire in one such religious feelings 
as the interior of a European Catholic church. In 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



123 



many American towns, the church is let for meetings, 
concerts, exhibitions, bazaars, etc., and so far as you 
can see, there is nothing to distinguish it from an ordi- 
nary lecture hall. 

Yet it is a church, and both lecturer and audience 
feel it. 




CHAPTER XIV. 

Marcus Aurelius in America— Chairmen I have 
HAD — American, English, and Scotch Chair- 
men — One who had Been to Boulogne — Talk- 
ative AND Silent Chairmen — A Trying Oc- 
casion — The Lord is Asked to Allow the 
Audience to See my Points. 



Nezv York, January 22. 

THERE are indeed very few Americans who have 
not either tact or a sense of humor. They make 
the best .of chairmen. They know that the audience 
have not come to hear them, and that all that is re- 
quired of them is to introduce the lecturer in very few 
words, and to give him a good start. Who is the 
lecturer that would not appreciate, nay, love, such a 
chairman as Dr. R. S. MacArthur, who introduced me 
yesterday to a New York audience in the following 
manner? 

"Ladies and Gentlemen," said he, " the story goes 
that, last summer, a party of Americans staying in 
Rome paid a visit to the famous Spithover's bookshop 
in the Piazza di Spagna. Now Spithover is the most 
learned of bibliophiles. You must go thither if you need 
artistic and archseological works of the profoundest 
research and erudition. But one of the ladies in this 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 125 

tourists' party only wanted the lively travels in America 
of Max O'Rell, and she asked for the book at Spit- 
hover's. There came in a deep guttural voice — an 
Anglo-German voice — from a spectacled clerk behind 
a desk, to this purport : ' Marcus Aurelius vos neffer in 
te Unided Shtaates!' But, ladies and gentlemen, he 
is now, and here he is." 

With such an introduction, I was immediately in 
touch with my audience. 

What a change after English chairmen ! 

A few days before lecturing in any English town, 
under the auspices of a Literary Society or Mechanics' 
Institute, the lecturer generally receives from the 
secretary a letter running somewhat as follow : 

Dear Sir : 

I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one 
of our vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the 
chair at your lecture. 

Translated into plain English, this reads : 

My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a 
chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture 
before the members of our Society. 

In my few years' lecturing experience, I have come 
across all sorts and conditions of chairmen, but I can 
recollect very few that " have helped me." Now, what 
is the ofifice, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions ? 
He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the 
audience. For this he needs to be able to make a neat 
speech. He has to tell the audience who the lecturer 
is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the 
case. I was once introduced to an audience who 







MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES ! " 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 127 

knew me, by a chairman who, I don't think, had ever 
heard of me in his life. Before going on the platform 
he asked me whether I had written anything, next 
whether I was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc. 

Sometimes the chairman is nervous ; he hems and 
haws, cannot find the words he wants, and only suc- 
ceeds in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes, on the 
other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was 
once introduced to a New York audience by General 
Horace Porter. Those of my readers who know the 
delightful general and have heard him deliver one of 
those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable 
manner, will agree with me that certainly there was 
danger in that ; and they will not be surprised when I 
tell them that after his delightfully witty and graceful 
little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show 
was over. 

Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate 
of the neighborhood, though he may be noted for his 
long, prosy orations — which annoy the public ; or to a 
very popular man in the locality who gets all the ap- 
plause — which annoys the lecturer. 

"Brevity is the soul of wit," should be the motto of 
chairmen, and I sympathize with a friend of mine who 
says that chairmen, like little boys and girls, should be 
seen and not heard. 

Of those chairmen who can and do speak, the Scotch 
ones are generally good. They have a knack of start- 
ing the evening with some droll Scotch anecdote, told 
with that piquant and picturesque accent of theirs, and 
of putting the audience in a good humor. Occasion- 
ally they will also make apropos and equally droll little 



128 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

speeches at the close. One evening, in talking of 
America, I had mentioned the fact that American ban- 
quets were very lively, and that I thought the fact of 
Americans being able to keep up such a flow of wit for 
so many hours, was perhaps due to their drinking Apol- 
linaris water instead of stronger things after dessert. 
At the end of the lecture, the chairman rose and said 
he had greatly enjoyed it, but that he must take ex- 
ception to one statement the lecturer had made, for 
he thought it " fery deeficult to be wutty on Apollinaris 
watter." 

Another kind of chairman is the one who kills your 
finish, and stops all the possibility of your being called 
back for applause, by coming forward, the very instant 
the last words are out of your mouth, to inform the 
audience that the next lecture will be given by Mr. So- 
and-So, or to make a statement of the Society's finan- 
cial position, concluding by appealing to the members 
to induce their friends to join. 

Then there is the chairman who does not know what 
you are going to talk about, but thinks it his duty to 
give the audience a kind of summary of what he imag- 
ines the lecture is going to be. He is terrible. But he 
is nothing to the one who, when the lecture is over, 
will persist in summing it up, and explaining your 
own jokes, especially the ones he has not quite seen 
through. This is the dullest, the saddest chairman yet 
invented. 

Some modest chairmen apologize for standing be- 
tween the lecturer and the audience, and declare they 
cannot speak, but do. Others promise to speak a min- 
ute only, but don't. 




THE CHAIRMAN. 



130 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" What shall I speak about ? " said a chairman to me 
one day, after I had been introduced to him in the little 
back room behind the platform. 

"If you will oblige me, sir," I replied, " kindly speak 
about — one minute." 

Once I was introduced to the audience as the pro- 
moter of good feelings between France and England. 

" Sometimes," said the chairman, " we see clouds of 
misunderstanding arise between the French — between 
the English — between the two. The lecturer of this 
evening makes it his business to disperse these clouds — 

these clouds — to — to But I will not detain you 

any longer. His name is familiar to all of us. Fm 
sure he needs no introduction to this audience. We 
all know him. I have much pleasure in introducing 

to you Mr. — Mosshiay — Mr. " Then he looked at 

me in despair. 

It was evident he had forgotten my name. 

" Max O'Rell is, I believe, what you are driving at," 
I whispered to him. 

The most objectionable chairmen in England are, 
perhaps, local men holding civic honors. Accustomed 
to deliver themselves of a speech whenever and wher- 
ever they get a chance, aldermen, town councilors, 
members of local boards, and school boards, never 
miss an opportunity of getting upon a platform to 
address a good crowd. Not long ago, I was introduced 
to an audience in a large English city by a candidate 
for civic honors. The election of the town council 
was to take place a fortnight afterward, and this gen- 
tleman profited by the occasion to air all his grievances 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



131 



against the sitting council, and to assure the citizens 
that if they Avould only elect him, there were bright 
days in store for them and their city. This was the 
gist of the matter. The speech lasted twenty minutes. 
Once the chair was taken by an alderman in a Lan- 




^ 



"HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR NAME?" 



cashire city, and the hall was crowded. " What a fine 
house ! " I remarked to the chairman as we sat down 
on the platform. 

"Very fine indeed," he said; "everybody in the 
town knew I was going to take the chain" 

I was sorry I had spoken. 



132 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

More than once, when announced to deliver a lec- 
ture on France and the French, I have been introduced 
by a chairman who, having spent his holidays in that 
country once or twice, opened the evening's proceed- 
ings by himself delivering a lecture on France. I have 
felt very tempted to imitate a confrere, and say to the 
audience : " Ladies and Gentlemen, as one lecture on 
France is enough for an evening, perhaps you would 
rather I spoke about something else now." The con- 
frere I have just mentioned was to deliver a lecture on 
Charles Dickens one evening. The chairman knew 
something of Charles Dickens and, for quite a quarter 
of an hour, spoke on the great English novelist, giving 
anecdotes, extracts of his writings, etc. When the 
lecturer rose, he said : " Ladies and Gentlemen, two 
lectures on Charles Dickens are perhaps more than you 
expected to hear to-night. You have just heard a 
lecture on Charles Dickens. I am now going to give 
you one on Charles Kingsley." 

Sometimes I get a little amusement, however (as in 
the country town of X.), out of the usual proceedings 
of the society before whose members I am engaged to 
appear. At X., the audience being assembled and the 
time up, I was told to go on the platform alone and, 
being there, to immediately sit down. So I went on, 
and sat down. Some one in the room then rose and 
proposed that Mr. N. should take the chair. Mr. N., 
it appeared, had been to Boulogne {to B'long), and was 
particularly fitted to introduce a Frenchman. In a 
speech of about five minutes' duration, all Mr. N.'s 
qualifications for the post of chairman that evening 
were duly set forth. Then some one else rose and 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 133 

seconded the proposition, re-enumerating most of these 
qualifications. Mr. N. then marched up the hall, 
ascended the platform, and proceeded to return thanks 
for the kind manner in which he had been proposed 
for the chair and for the enthusiasm (a few friends had 
applauded) with which the audience had sanctioned 
the choice. He said it was true that he had been in 
France, and that he greatly admired the country and 
the people, and he was glad to have this opportunity 
to say so before a Frenchman. Then he related some 
of his traveling impressions in France. A few people 
coughed, two or three more bold stamped their feet, 
but he took no heed and, for ten minutes, he gave the 
audience the benefit of the information he had gath- 
ered in Boulogne. These preliminaries over, I gave 
my lecture, after which Mr. N. called upon a member 
of the audience to propose a vote of thanks to the 
lecturer " for the most amusing and interesting dis- 
course, etc." 

Now a paid lecturer wants his check when his work 
is over, and although a vote of thanks, when it is 
spontaneous, is a compliment which he greatly appre- 
ciates, he is more likely to feel awkwardness than 
pleasure when it is a mere red-tape formality. The 
vote of thanks, on this particular occasion, was pro- 
posed in due form. Then it was seconded by some 
one who repeated two or three of my points and spoiled 
them. By this time I began to enter into the fun of 
the thing, and, after having returned thanks for the 
vote of thanks and sat down, I stepped forward again, 
filled with a mild resolve to have the last word : 

" Ladies and Gentlemen," I said, " I have now much 



134 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

pleasure in proposing that a hearty vote of thanks be 
given Mr. N. for the able manner in which he has 
filled the chair. I am proud to have been introduced 
to you by an Englishman who knows my country so 
well." I went again through the list of Mr. N.'s 
qualifications, not forgetting the trip to Boulogne and 
the impressions it had left on him. Somebody rose 
and seconded this. Mr. N. delivered a speech to 
thank the audience once more, and then those who 
had survived went home. 

Some Nonconformist societies will engage a light or 
humorous lecturer, put him in their chapel, and open 
his mouth with prayer. Prayer is good, but I would 
as soon think of saying grace before dancing as of be- 
ginning my lecture with a prayer. This kind -of ex- 
perience has been mine several times. A truly trying 
experience it was, on the first occasion, to be accom- 
panied to the platform by the minister, who, motioning 
me to sit down, advanced to the front, lowered his 
head, and said in solemn accents : " Let us pray." 
After I got started, it took me fully ten minutes to 
make the people realize that they were not at church. 
This experience I have had in America as well as in 
England. Another experience in this line was still 
worse, for the prayer was supplemented by the singing 
of a hymn of ten or twelve verses. You may easily 
imagine that my first remark fell dead flat. 

I have been introduced to audiences as Mossoo, 
Meshoe, and Mounzeer O'Reel, and other British adap- 
tations of our word Monsieur, and found it very diffi- 
cult to bear with equanimity a chairman who maltreated 
a name which I had taken some care to keep correctly 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 1 35 

spelt before the public. Yet this man is charming 
when compared with the one who, in the midst of his 
introductory remarks, turns to you, and in a stage 
whisper perfectly audible all over the hall, asks : " How 
do you pronounce your name? " 

Passing over chairman chatty and chairman terse, 
chairman eloquent and chairman the reverse, I feel de- 
cidedly most kindly toward the silent chairman. He 
is very rare, but he does exist and, when met with, is ex- 
ceedingly precious. Why he exists, in some English 
Institutes, I have always been at a loss to imagine. 
Whether he comes on to see that the lecturer does not 
run off before his time is up, or with the water bottle, 
which is the only portable thing on the platform gen- 
erally ; whether he is a successor to some venerable 
deaf and dumb founder of his Society ; or whether he 
goes on with the lecturer to give a lesson in modesty 
to the public, as who should say : " I could speak an if 
I would, but I forbear." Be his raison d'etre what it 
may, we all love him. To the nervous novice he is a 
kind of quiet support, to the old stager he is as a pic- 
ture unto the eye and as music unto the ear. 

Here I pause. I want to collect my thoughts. Does 
my memory serve me? Am I dreaming, or worse still, 
am I on the point of inventing? No, I could not in- 
vent such a story, it is beyond my power. 

I was once lecturing to the students of a religious 
college in America. Before I began, a professor 
stepped forward, and offered a prayer, in which he 
asked the Lord to allow the audience to see my points. 

Now, I duly feel the weight of responsibility attach- 



136 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

ing to such a statement, and in justice to myself I 
can do no less than give the reader the petition just 
as it fell on my astonished ears : 

" Lord, Thou knovvest that we work hard for Thee, 
and that recreation is necessary in order that we may 
work with renewed vigor. We have to-night with us 
a gentleman from France [excuse my recording a com- 
pliment too flattering], whose criticisms are witty and 
refined, but subtle, and we pray Thee to so prepare our 
minds that we may thoroughly understand and enjoy 
them." 

" But subtle! " 

I am still wondering whether my lectures are so 
subtle as to need praying over, or whether that audi- 
ence was so dull that they needed praying for. 

Whichever it was, the prayer was heard, for the au- 
dience proved warm, keen, and thoroughly apprecia- 
tive. 




CHAPTER XV. 
Reflections on the Typical American. 



Neiv York, January 23. 

I WAS asked to-day by the editor of the North 
American Review to write an article on the typi- 
cal American. 

The typical American ! 

In the eyes of my beloved compatriots, the typical 
American is a man with hair falling over his shoulders, 
wearing a sombrero, a red shirt, leather leggings, a 
pair of revolvers in his belt, spending his life on horse- 
back, and able to shoot a fly off the tip of your nose 
without for a moment endangering your olfactory 
organ; and, since Buffalo Bill has been exhibiting his 
Indians and cowboys to the Parisians, this impression 
has become a deep conviction. 

I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my 
mother when I first broke the news to her that I 
wanted to go to America. My mother had prac- 
tically never left a lovely little provincial town of 
France. Her face expressed perfect bewilderment. 

" You don't mean to say you want to go to Amer- 
ica ?" she said. ''What for?" 

" I am invited to give lectures there." 

" Lectures? in what language ? " 

J37 



138 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" Well, mother, I will try my best in English." 

" Do they speak English out there ? " 

" H'm — pretty well, I think.'' 

We did not go any further on the subject that time. 
Probably the good mother thought of the time when 
the Californian gold-fields attracted all the scum of 
Europe, and, no doubt, she thought that it was strange 
for a man who had a decent position in Europe, to go 
and " seek fortune" in America. 

Later on, however, after returning to England, I 
wrote to her that I had made up my mind to go. 

Her answer was full of gentle reproaches, and of 
sorrow at seeing that she had lost all her influence 
over her son. She signed herself " always your loving 
mother," and indulged in a postscript. Madame de 
S6vign6 said that the gist of a woman's letter was to 
be found in the postscript. 

My mother's was this : 

" P.S. — I shall not tell any one in the town that you 
have gone to America." 

This explains why I still dare show my face in my 
little native town. 

The typical American ! 

First of all, does he exist ? I do not think so. As 
I have said elsewhere, there are Americans in plenty, 
but the American has not made his appearance yet. 
The type existed a hundred years ago in New England. 
He is there still ; but he is not now a national type, 
he is only a local one. 

I was talking one day with two eminent Americans 
on the subject of the typical American, real or imag- 




THE TYPICAL AMERICAN, 



14° A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

inary. One of them was of opinion that he was a tac- 
iturn being ; the other, on the contrary, maintained 
that he was talkative. How is a foreigner to dare 
decide, where two eminent natives find it impossible to 
agree ? 

In speaking of the typical American, let us under- 
stand each other. All the civilized nations of the 
earth are alike in one respect ; they are all composed 
of two kinds of men, those that are gentlemen, and 
those that are not. America is no exception to this 
rule. Fifth Avenue does not differ from Belgravia 
and Mayfair. A gentleman is everywhere a gentle- 
man. As a type, he belongs to no particular country, 
he is universal. 

When the writer of some " society " paper, English 
or American, reproaches a sociologist for writing about 
the masses instead of the classes, suggesting that " he 
probably never frequented the best society of the 
nation he describes," that writer writes himself down 
an ass. 

In the matters of feeling, conduct, taste, culture, I 
have never discovered the least difference between a 
gentleman from America and a gentleman from 
France, England, Russia, or any other country of 
Europe — including Germany. So, if we want to find a 
typical American, it is not in good society that we 
must search for him, but among the mass of the popula- 
tion. 

Well, it is just here that our search will break down. 
We shall come across all sorts and conditions of Amer- 
icans, but not one that is really typical. 

A little while ago, the Century Magazine published 



\ 




THE AMERICAN OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 



142 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

specimens of composite photography. First, there was 
the portrait of one person, then that of this same face 
witii another superposed, then another containing 
three faces blended, and so on up to eight or nine. On 
the last page the result was shown. I can only com- 
pare the typical American to the last of those. This 
appears to me the process of evolution through which 
the American type is now going. What it will be 
when this process of evolution is over, no one, I im- 
agine, can tell. The evolution will be complete when 
immigration shall have ceased, and all the different 
types have been well mixed and assimilated. While 
the process of assimilation is still going on, the result 
is suspended, and the type is incomplete. 

But, meanwhile, are there not certain characteristic 
traits to be found throughout almost all America? 
That is a question much easier to answer. 

Is it necessary to repeat that I put aside good society 
and confine myself merely to the people? 

Nations are like individuals : when they are young, 
they have the qualities and the defects of children. 
The characteristic trait of childhood is curiosity. It is 
also that of the American. I have never been in Aus- 
tralia, but I should expect to find this trait in the 
Australian. 

Look at American journalism. What does it live 
on ? Scandal and gossip. Let a writer, an artist, or 
any one else become popular in the States, and the 
papers will immediately tell the public at what time 
he rises and what he takes for breakfast. When any 
one of the least importance arrives in America, he is 
quickly beset by a band of reporters who ask him a 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



143 



host of preposterous questions and examine him mi- 
nutely from head to foot, in order to tell the public 
next day whether he wears laced, buttoned, or elastic 
boots, enlighten them as to the cut of his coat and the 




CURIOSITY IN AUSTRALIA. 



color of his trowsers, and let them know if he parts his 
hair in the middle or not. 

Every time I went into a new town to lecture I was 
interviewed, and the next day, besides an account of 



144 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

the lecture, there was invariably a paragraph somewhat 
in this style : 

The lecturer is a man of about forty, whose cranium is getting 
visible through his hair. He wears a double eye-glass, with which 
he plays while talking to his audience. His handkerchief was 
black-bordered. He wore the regulation patent leather shoes, and 
his shirt front was fastened with a single stud. He spoke without 
effort or pretension, and often with his hands in his pockets, etc. 

A few days ago, on reading the morning papers in a 
town where I had lectured the night before, I found, 
in one of them, about twenty lines consecrated to my 
lecture, and half a column to my hat. 

I must tell you that this hat was brown, and all the 
hats in America are black. If you wear anything 
that is not exactly like what Americans wear, you are 
gazed at as if you were a curious animal. The Amer- 
icans are as great badauds as the Parisians. In Lon- 
don, you may go down Regent Street or Piccadilly 
got up as a Swiss admiral, a Polish general, or even a 
Highlander, and nobody will take the trouble to look at 
you. But, in America, you have only to put on a brown 
hat or a pair of light trowsers, and you will become the 
object of a curiosity which will not fail very promptly 
to bore you, if you are fond of tranquillity, and like to 
go about unremarked. 

I was so fond of that poor brown hat, too ! It was 
an incomparably obliging hat. It took any shape, and 
adapted itself to any circumstances. It even went into 
my pocket on occasions. I had bought it at Lincoln 
& Bennett's, if you please. But I had to give it up. 
To my great regret, I saw that it was imperative : its 
popularity bid fair to make me jealous. Twenty lines 



A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 145 

about me, and half a column about that hat I It was 
time to come to some determination. It was not to 
be put up with any longer. So I took it up tenderly, 
smoothed it with care, and laid it in a neat box which 
was then posted to the chief editor of the paper with 
the following note: 

Dear Sir: 

I see by your estimable paper that my hat has attracted a good 
deal of public attention during its short sojourn in your city. I am 
even tempted to think that it has attracted more of it than my 
lecture. I send you the interesting headgear, and beg you will 
accept it as a souvenir of my visit, and with my respectful compli- 
ments. 

A citizen of the Great Republic knows how to take 
a joke. The worthy editor inserted my letter in the 
next number of his paper, and informed his readers 
that my hat fitted him to a nicety, and that he was 
going to have it dyed and wear it. He further said, 
"Max O'Rell evidently thinks the song, ' Where did 
you get that hat ? ' was specially .written to annoy 
him," and went on to the effect that " Max O'Rell is 
not the only man who does not care to tell where he 
got his hat." 

Do not run away with the idea that such nonsense as 
this has no interest for the American public. It has, 

American reporters have asked me, with the most 
serious face in the world, whether I worked in the 
morning, afternoon, or evening, and what color paper 
I used {sic). One actually asked me whether it was 
true that M. Jules Claretie used white paper to write 
his novels on, and blue paper for his newspaper articles. 
Not having the honor of a personal acquaintance with 



146 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

the director of the Comedie-Fran^aise, I had to confess 
my inability to gratify my amiable interlocutor. 

Look at the advertisements in the newspapers. 
There you have the bootmaker, the hatter, the travel- 
ing quack, publishing their portraits at the head of 
their advertisements. Why are those portraits there, 
if it be not to satisfy the curiosity of customers ? 

The mass of personalities, each more trumpery than 
the other, those details of people's private life, and all 
the gossip daily served up in the newspapers, are they 
not proof enough that curiosity is a characteristic trait 
of the American ? 

This curiosity, which often shows itself in the most 
impossible questions, gives immense amusement to 
Europeans. Unhappily, it amuses them at the ex- 
pense of well-bred Americans — people who are as inno- 
cent of it as the members of the stifTest aristocracy in 
the world could be. The English, especially, persist 
in not distinguishing Americans who are gentlemen 
from Americans wtio are not. 

And even that easy-going American bourgeois, with 
his childish but good-humored nature, they often fail 
to do justice to. They too often look at his curiosity 
as impertinence and ill-breeding, and will not admit 
that, in nine cases out of ten, the freedom he uses 
with you is but a show of good feeling, an act of good- 
fellowship. 

Take, for instance, the following little story : 
An American is seated in a railway carriage, and 
opposite him is a lady in deep mourning, and looking a 
picture of sadness ; a veritable mater eiolorosa. 



A FRENCHMAlSr IN AMERICA. 147 

" Lost a father ? " begins the worthy fellow. 

" No, sir." 

" A mother, maybe ? " 

" No, sir." 

*' Ah! a child then?" 

'* No, sir ; I have lost my husband." 

" Your husband ! Ah ! Left you comfortable?" 

The lady, rather offended, retires to the other end 
of the car, and cuts short the conversation. 

"Rather stuck up, this woman," remarks the good 
Yankee to his neighbor. 

The intention was good, if the way of showing it 
was not. He had but wanted to show the poor lady 
the interest he took in her. 

After having seen you two or three times, the 
American will suppress " Mr." and address you by 
your name without any handle to it. Do not say that 
this is ill placed familiarity ; it is meant as an act of 
good-fellowship, and should be received by you as 
such. 

If you are stiff, proud, and stuck-up, for goodness' 
sake, never go to America ; you will never get on there. 
On the contrary, take over a stock of simple, affable 
manners and a good temper, and you will be treated 
as a friend everywhere, feted, and well looked after. 

In fact, try to deserve a certificate of good-fellow- 
ship, such as the Clover Club, of Philadelphia, awards 
to those who can sit at its hospitable table without 
taking affront at the little railleries leveled at them by 
the members of that lively association. With people 
of refinement who have humor, you can indulge in a 
joke at their expense. So says La Bruyere. Every 



148 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

visitor to America, who wants to bring back a pleasant 
recollection of his stay there, should lay this to heart. 

Such are the impressions that I formed of the Ameri 
can during my first trip to his country, and the more 
I think over the matter, the more sure I am that 
they were correct. Curiosity is his chief little failing, 
and good-fellowship his most prominent quality. This 
is the theme I will develop and send to the Editor of 
the North American Reviezv. I will profit by having a 
couple of days to spend in New York to install myself 
in a cosy corner of that cosiest of clubs, the " Players," 
and there write it. 

It seems that, in the same number of this magazine, 
the same subject is to be treated by Mr. Andrew Lang. 
He has never seen Jonathan at home, and it will be in- 
teresting to see what impressions he has formed of him 
abroad. In the hands of such a graceful writer, the 
"typical American" is sure to be treated in a pleasant 
and interesting manner. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

I AM Asked to Express RIvself Freely on 
America — I Meet Mrs. Blank and for the 
First Time HearofMr. Blank — Beacon Street 
Society— The Boston Clubs. 



Boston, January 25. 

IT amuses me to notice how the Americans to whom 
I have the pleasure of being introduced, refrain 
from asking me what I think of America. But they 
invariably inquire if the impressions of my first visit are 
confirmed. 

This afternoon, at an "At Home," I met a lady from 
New York, who asked me a most extraordinary ques- 
tion. 

"I have read ' Jonathan and His Continent,* " she 
said to me. " I suppose that is a book of impressions 
written for publication. But now, tell me en confidence, 
what do you think of us ? " 

" Is there an3^thing in that book," I replied, " which 
can make you suppose that it is not the faithful ex- 
pression of what the author thinks of America and 
the Americans? " 

" Well," she said, " it is so complimentary, taken al- 
together, that I must confess I had a lurking suspicion 
of your having purposely flattered us and indulged our 



15° A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

national weakness for hearing ourselves praised, so as 
to make sure of a warm reception for your book." 

"No doubt," I replied, "by writing a flattering book 
on any country, you would greatly increase your 
chance of a large sale in that country ; but, on the 
other hand, you may write an abusive book on any 
country and score a great success among that nation's 
neighbors. For my part, I have always gone my own 
quiet way, philosophizing rather than opinionating, and 
when I write, it is not with the aim of pleasing any 
particular public. I note down what I see, say what 
I think, and people may read me or not, just as they 
please. But I think I may boast, however, that my 
pen is never bitter, and I do not care to criticise unless 
I feel a certain amount of sympathy with the subject 
of my criticism. If I felt that I could only honestly 
say hard things of people, I would always abstain 
altogether." 

" Now," said my fair questioner, "how is it that you 
hav^e so little to say about our Fifth Avenue folks ? Is it 
because you have seen very little of them, or is it be- 
cause you could only have said hard things of them ? " 

" On the contrary," I replied ; " I saw a good deal of 
them, but what I saw showed me that to describe them 
would be only to describe polite society, as it exists in 
London and elsewhere. Society gossip is not in my 
line; boudoir and club smoking-room scandal has no 
charm for me. Fifth Avenue resembles too much 
Mayfair and Belgravia to make criticism of it worth 
attempting." 

I knew this answer would have the effect of putting 
me into the lady's good graces at once, and I was not 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



151 



disappointed. She accorded to me her sweetest smile, 
as I bowed to her to go and be introduced to another 
lady by the mistress of the house. 

The next lady was ?, Bostonian. I had to explain to 



\MBK ^ 




^ 



FIFTH AVENUE FOLK. 



her why I had not spoken of Beacon Street people, 
using the same argument as in the case of Fifth Avenue 
society, and with the same success. 



At the same " At Home," I had the pleasure of 



152 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



meeting Mrs. Blank, whom I had met many times in 
London and Paris. 

She is one of the crowd of pretty and clever women 
whom America sends to brighten up European society, 
and who reappear in London and Paris with the 
regularity of the swallows. You meet them every- 
where, and conclude that they must be married, since 




A TELEPHONE AND TICKER. 

they are styled Mrs. and not Miss. But whether they 
are wives, widows, or divorcees, you rarely think of in. 
quiring, and you may enjoy their friendship for years 
without knowing whether they have a living lord or 
not. 

Mrs. Blank, as I say, is a most fascinating specimen 
of America's daughters, and to-day I find that Mr. 
Blank is also very much alive, but that the companions 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 153 

of his joys and sorrows are the telephone and the 
ticker; in fact it is thanks to his devotion to these 
that the wife of his bosom is able to adorn European 
society during every recurring season. 

American women have such love for freedom and 
are so cool-headed that their visits to Europe could 
not arouse suspicion even in the most malicious. 
But, nevertheless, I am glad to have heard of Mr. 
Blank, because it is comfortable to have one's mind at 
rest on these subjects. Up to now, whenever I had 
been asked, as sometimes happened, though seldom: 
•'Who is Mr. Blank, and where is he?" I had always 
answered : " Last puzzle out ! " 



Lunched to-day in the beautiful Algonquin Club, 
as the guest of Colonel Charles H. Taylor, and met the 
editors of the other Boston papers, among whom was 
John Boyle O'Reilly,* the lovely poet, and the delight- 
ful man. The general conversation turned on two 
subjects most interesting to me, viz., American journ- 
alism, and American politics. ' All these gentlemen 
seemed to agree that the American people take an 
interest in local politics only, but not in imperial 
politics, and this explains why the papers of the 
smaller towns give detailed accounts of what is 
going on in the houses of legislature of both city and 
State, but do not concern themselves about what is 
going on in Washington. I had come to that conclu- 
sion myself, seeing that the great papers of New York, 
Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago devoted columns to the 

* J. B. O'Reilly died in 1890. 



154 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

sayings and doings of the political world in London 
and Paris, and seldom a paragraph to the sittings of 
Congress in Washington. 

In the morning, before lunch, I had called on Mr. 
John Holmes, the editor of the Boston Herald, and 
there met a talented lady who writes under the nom de 
phwie of " Max Eliot," and with whom I had a delight- 
ful half-hour's chat. 

I have had to-day the pleasure of meeting the edi- 
tors of all the Boston newspapers. 

In the evening, I dined with the members of the 
New England Club, who meet every month to listen, at 
dessert, to some interesting debate or lecture. The 
wine is supplied by bets. You bet, for instance, that 
the sun will shine on the following Friday at half-past 
two. If you lose, you are one of those who will have 
to supply one, two, or three bottles of champagne at 
the next dinner, and so on. This evening the lecture, 
or rather the short address, was given by Colonel Charles 
H. Taylor on the history of American journalism. I 
was particularly interested to hear the history of the 
foundation of the New York Herald, by James Gordon 
Bennett, and that of the New York World, by Mr. 
Pulitzer, a Hungarian emigrant, who, some years ago, 
arrived in the States, unable to speak English, became 
jack-of-all-trades, then a reporter on a German pa- 
per, proprietor of a Western paper, and then bought 
the World, which is now one of the best paying con- 
cerns in the whole of the United States. This man, 
who, to maintain himself, not in health, but just alive, 
•is obliged to be constantly traveling, directs the paper 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. ISS 

by telegraph from Australia, from Japan, from London, 
or wherever he happens to be. It is nothing short of 
marvelous. 



I finished the evening in the St. Botolph Club, and 
I may say that I have to-day spent one of the most 
delightful days of my life, with those charming and 
highly cultured Bostonians, who, a New York witty 
friend of mine declares, " are educated beyond their 
intellects." 




CHAPTER XVII. 

A Lively Sunday in Boston — Lfxture in 
THE Boston Theater— Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes — The Booth-Modteska Combination. 



Boston, January 26. 

MAX ELIOT " devotes a charming and mo.'-t 
flattering article to me in this morning's T/rr- 
ald, embodying the conversation we had together 
yesterday in the Boston Herald's office. Many thanks, 
Max. 

A reception was given to me this afternoon b\' 
Citizen George Francis Train, and I met man}- 
artists, journalists, and a galaxy of charming 
women. 

The Citizen is pronounced to be the greatest crank 
on earth. I found him decidedly eccentric, but enter- 
taining, witty, and a first-rate raconteur. He shakes 
hands with you in the Chinese fashion — he shakes 
his own. He has taken a solemn oath that his 
body shall never come in contact with the bod}' of 
any one. 

A charming programme of music and recitations 
was gone through. 

The invitation cards issued for the occasion speak 
for themselves. 

13C 



J^^"'^ 




THE CITIZEN SHAKES HANDS. 



15S .4 FREXC/nrA.Y IX AMERICA. 

CITIZEN 

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN'S 

RECEPTION 

To 

CITOYEN MAX O'RELL. 
P. S. — " Demons " have check- 
mated " Psychos ■■ I Invitations 
canceled I " Hub " Boycotts Sun- 
day Receptions ! Boston half 
centuiy behind New York and 
Europe's Elite Society. (Ancient 
Athens still Ancient !) Regrets 
and Regards ! Good-by, Tre- 
mont ! (The Proprietors not to 
blame.) 

Vide some of his " Apothegmic Works " ! (Reviewed in Pulitzer's 
New York World and Cosmos Press !) 



John Bull et Son He ! Les Filles de John Bull ! Les Chers 
Voisins ! L'Ami Macdonald I John Bull, Junior ! Jonathan et 
Son Continent I L'Eloquence Frangaise ! etc. 

YOU ARE INVITED TO MEET 

this distinguished French Traveler, Author, and Lecturer (From 
the land of Lafayette, Rochambeau, and De Grasse), 

AT MY SIXTH ' POP-CORN RECEPTION " ! 

Sunday, January Twenty-Sixth, From 2 to 7 p. m. 
(Tremont House !) 

Private Banquet Hall .' F^f^y " Notables " .' 

Talent from Dozen Operas and Theaters ! All Stars [ No 
Airs! No "Wall Flowers"! No Aniens I No Selahs ! But 
"iMUTL'AL ADMIRATION CLUB OF GOOD FELLOW- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 159 

SHIP " ! No Boredom ! No Formality ! (Dress as you like !) 
No Programme ! (Pianos ! Cellos ! Guitars ! Mandolins ! 
Banjos ! Violins ! Harmonicas .' Zithers !) Opera, Theater 
and Press Represented ! 

Succeeding Receptions : To Steele Mackaye ! Nat Goodwin ! 
Count Zubof (St, Petersburg) ! Prima Donna Clementina De 
Vere (Italy) ! Albany Press Club ! (Duly announced printed 
invitations !) 

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN. 

Tremont House for Winter ! 

Psychic Press thanks for friendly 
notices of Sunday Musicales * 

It will be seen from the " P. S." that the reception 
could not be held at the Tremont House ; but the 
plucky Citizen did not allow himself to be beaten, and 
the reception took place at the house of a friend. 

In the evening I lectured in the Boston Theater to 
a beautiful audience. 

If there is a horrible fascination about " the man 
who won't smile," as I mentioned in a foregoing 
chapter, there is a lovely fascination about the lady 
who seems to enjoy your lecture thoroughly. You 
watch the effects of your remarks on her face, and her 
bright, intellectual eyes keep you in good form the 
whole evening ; in fact, you give the lecture to her. I 
perhaps never felt the influence of that face more 
powerfully than to-night. I had spoken for a few 
minutes, when Madame Modjeska, accompanied by 
her husband, arrived and took a seat on the first row 
of the orchestra stalls. To be able to entertain the 
great tragedienne became my sole aim, and as soon as 



l6o A FREXCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

I perceived that I was successful, I felt perfectly proud 
and happy. I lectured to her the whole evening. 
Her laughter and applause encouraged me, her beauti- 
ful, intellectual face cheered me up, and I was able to 
introduce a little more acting and by-play than usual. 

I had had the pleasure of making Madame Mod- 
jeska's acquaintance two years ago, during my first 
visit to the United States, and it was a great pleasure 
to be able to renew it after the lecture. 

I will go and see her Ophelia to-morrow night. 

Ja unary 27. 

Spent the whole morning wandering about Boston, 
and visiting a few interesting places. Beacon Street, 
the public gardens, and Commonwealth Avenue are 
among the finest thoroughfares I know. What enor- 
mous wealth is contained in those miles of huge 
mansions ! 

The more I see Boston, the more it strikes me as a 
great English cit}'. It has a character of its own, as 
no other American city has, excepting perhaps Wash- 
ington and Philadelphia. The solidit}' of the build- 
ings, the parks, the quietness of the women's dresses, 
the absence of the twang in most of the voices, all 
remind you of England. 

After lunch I called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
The " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " is now over 
eighty, but he is as young as ever, and will die with a 
kind smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eyes. 
I know no more delightful talker than this delightful 
man. You may say of him that every time he talks 
he says something. When he asked me what it was I 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. i6i 

had found most interesting in America, I wished I 
could have answered : " Why, my dear doctor, to see 
and to hear such a man as you, to be sure I " But the 
doctor is so simple, so unaffected, that I felt an answer 
of that kind, though perfectly sincere, would not have 
been one calculated to please him. The articles 
"Over the Tea Cups," which he writes every month 
for the Atlantic Monthly, and which will soon appear 
in book form, are as bright, witty, humorous, and phil- 
osophic as anything he ever wrote. Long may he 
live to delight his native land ! 

In the evening I went to see Mr. Edwin Booth and 
Madame Modjeska in " Hamlet." By far the two 
greatest tragedians of America in Shakespeare's 
greatest tragedy. I expected great things. I had 
seen Mounet-Suily in the part, Henry Irving, Wilson 
Barrett ; and I remembered the witty French quatrain, 
published on the occasion of Mounet-Sully attempting 
the part : 

Sans Fechter ni Riviere 

Le cas etait hasardeux; 

Jamais, non jamais sur terre, 

On n'a fait d'Hamlet sans eux. 

I had seen Mr. Booth three times before. As 
Brutus, I thought he was excellent. As Richelieu he 
\vas certainly magnificent ; dislago ideally superb. 

His Hamlet w^as a revelation to me. After seeing 
the r^.v\r\g Hamlet oi Mounet-Sull}', the somber Hamlet 
of Irving, and the dreamy Hamlet oi Wilson Barrett, I 
saw this evening Hamlet the philosopher, the rhetori- 
cian. 



i6: 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



Mr. Booth is too old to play Hamlet as he does, 
that is to say, without any attempt at making-up. He 
puts on a black wig, and that is all, absolutely all. It 
is, however, a most remarkable, subtle piece of acting 
in his hands. 

Madame Modjeska was beautiful as Ophelia. No 
tragedienne that I have ever seen weeps more natu- 
rally. In all sad situations she makes the chords of 
one's heart vibrate, and that without any trick or arti- 
fice, but simply by the modulations of her singularly 
sympathetic voice and such like natural means. 

It is very seldom that you can see in America, out- 
side of New York, more than one very good actor or 
actress playing together. So you may imagine the 
success of such a combination as Booth-Modjeska. 

Every night the theater is packed from floor to ceil- 
ing, although the prices of admission are doubled. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

St. Johnsbury — The State of Maine — New Eng- 
land Self-Control — Cold Climates and Frigid 
Audiences — Where is the Audience? — All 
Drunk ! — A Reminiscence of a Scotch Audi- 
ence ON A Saturday Night. 



SL Johnsbury (Vf.), January 28. 

ST. JOHNSBURY is a charming little town perched 
on the top of a mountain, from which a lovely- 
scene of hills and woods can be enjoyed. The whole 
country is covered with snow, and as I looked at it in 
the evening by the electric light, the effect was very 
beautiful. The town has only six thousand inhabi- 
tants, eleven hundred of whom came to hear my lec- 
ture to-night. Which is the European town of six 
thousand inhabitants that would supply an audience 
of eleven hundred people to a literary caitserie} 

St. Johnsbury has a dozen churches, a public library 
of 15,000 volumes, with a reading-room beautifully 
fitted with desks and perfectly adapted for study. A 
museum, a Young Men's Christian Association, with 
gymnasium, school-rooms, reading-rooms, play-rooms, 
and a lecture hall capable of accommodating over 
1000 people. Who, after that, would consider himself 
an exile if he had to live in St. Johnsbury? There is 

163 



164 A FRE.VCH.VA.V AV AMERICA. 

more intellectual life in it than in any French town 
outside of Paris and about a dozen more large cities. 



Portsea, January 30. 

I have been in the State of Maine for two days ; a 
strange State to be in, let me tell you. 

After addressing the Connecticut audience in Meri- 
den a few days ago, I thought I had had the experi- 
ence of the most frigid audience that could possibly 
be gathered together. Last Tuesday night, at Portsea, 
I was undeceived. 

Half-way between St. Johnsbury and Portsea, the 
day before yesterday, I was told that the train would 
be very late, and would not arrive at Portsea before 
half-past eight. My lecture in that city was to begin 
at eight. The only thing to do was to send a telegram 
to the manager of the lecture. At the next station I 
sent the following : 

"Train late. If possible, keep audience waiting 
half an hour. Will dress on board." 

I dressed in the state-room of the parlor-car. At 
forty minutes past eight the train arrived at Portsea. 
I immediately jumped into a cab and drove to the 
City Hall, where the lecture was to take place. The 
building was lighted, but, as I ascended the stairs, 
there was not a person to be seen or a sound to be 
heard. " The place is deserted," I thought; " and if 
anybody came to hear me, they have all gone." 

I opened the door of the private room behind the 
platform and there found the manager, who expressed 
his delight to see me. I excused myself, and was 



A FREyCHMAN IX AMERICA. 



^^5 




going to enter into a 
detailed explanation 
when he interrupted : 

"Oh, that's all right." 

"What do you 
mean? "said I. "Have 
you got an audience 
there, on the other side 
of that door? " 

" Why, we have got 
fifteen hundred people." 

"There?" said I, 
pointing to the door. 

" Yes, on the other 
side of that door." 

" But I can't hear a 
sound." 

" I guess you can't. 
But that's all right ; 
they are there." 

" I suppose," I said, 
" I had better apologize 
to them for keeping 
them waiting three- 
quarters of an hour." 

" Well, just as you 
please," said the man- 
ager. " I wouldn't." 

" Wouldn't you? " 

" No ; I guess they 
would have waited another half-hour without showing 
any sign of impatience," 



I TIP-TOED OUT. 



l66 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

I opened the door trembling. My desk was far, far 
away. My manager was right ; the audience was there. 
I stepped on the platform, shut the door after me, 
making as little noise as I could, and, walking on tiptoe 
so as to wake up as few people as possible, proceeded 
toward the table. Not one person applauded. A few 
people looked up unconcernedly, as if to say, "I guess 
that's the show." The rest seemed asleep, although 
their eyes were open. 

Arrived at the desk, I faced the audience, and ven- 
tured a little joke, which fell dead flat. 

I began to realize the treat that was in store for me 
that night. 

I tried another little joke, and — missed fire. 

"Never mind, old fellow," I said to myself; "it's 
two hundred and fifty dollars ; go ahead." 

And I went on. 

I saw a few people smile, but not one laughed, al- 
though I noticed that a good many were holding their 
handkerchiefs over their mouths, probably to stifle any 
attempt at such a frivolous thing as laughter. The 
eyes of the audience, which I always watch, showed 
signs of interest, and nobody left the hall until the 
conclusion of the lecture. When I had finished, I 
made a small bow, when certainly fifty people 
applauded. I imagined they were glad it was all over. 

" Well," I said to the manager, when I had returned 
to the little back room, " I suppose we must call this a 
failure." 

" A failure ! " said he ; " it's nothing of the sort.' Why, 
I have never seen them so enthusiastic in my life ! " 

I went to the hotel, and tried to forget the audience 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



167 



I had just had by recalling to my mind a joyous even- 
ing in Scotland. This happened about a year ago, in 
a mining town in the neighborhood of Glasgow, where 
I had been invited to lecture, on a Saturday night, to 
the members of a popular — very popular — Institute. 

I arrived at the station from Glasgow at half-past 
seven, and there found the secretary and the treasurer of 




I AM ESCORTED TO THE HALL. 

the Institute, who had been kind enough to come and 
meet me. We shook hands. They gave me a few 
words of welcome. I thought my friends looked a 
little bit queer. They proposed that we should walk to 
the lecture hall. The secretary took my right arm, the 
treasurer took my left, and, abreast, the three of us 



1 68 A FREXCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

proceeded toward the hall. They did not take me to 
that place; /took them, holding them fast all the way 
— the treasurer especially. 

We arrived in good time, although we stopped once 
for light refreshment. At eight punctually, I entered 
the hall, preceded by the president, and followed by 
the members of the committee. The president intro- 
duced me in a most queer, incoherent speech. I rose, 
and was vociferously cheered. When silence was re- 
stored, I said in a calm, almost solemn manner: " Ladies 
and Gentlemen." This was the signal for more cheer- 
ing and whistling. In France whistling means hissing, 
and I began to feel uneasy, but soon I bore in mind 
that whistling, in the North of Great Britain, was used 
to express the highest pitch of enthusiasm. 

So I went on. 

The audience laughed at everything I said, and even 
before I said it. I had never addressed such keen 
people. They seemed so anxious to laugh and cheer 
in the right place that they laughed and cheered all 
the time — so much so that in an hour and twenty 
minutes, I had only got through half my lecture, which 
I had to bring to a speedy conclusion. 

The president rose and proposed a vote of thanks in 
another most queer speech, which was a new occasion 
for cheering. 

When we had retired in the committee room, I said 
to the secretary : " What's the matter with the presi- 
dent? Is he quite right?'.' I added, touching my 
forehead. 

" Oh ! " said the secretary, striking his chest as 
proudly as possible, " he is drunk — and so am I," 




y 



"he's drunk, and so am I. 



17° .4 FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

The explanation of the whole strange evening 
dawned upon me. Of course they were drunk, and 
so was the audience. 

That night, I believe I was the only sober person on 
the premises. 



Yesterday, I had an interesting chat with a native of 
the State of Maine on the subject of my lecture at 
Portsea. 

" You are perfectly wrong," he said to me, " in sup- 
posing that your lecture was not appreciated. I was 
present, and I can assure you that the attentive silence 
in which they listened to you from beginning to end is 
the proof that they appreciated you. You would also 
be wrong in supposing that they do not appreciate 
humor. On the contrary, they are very keen of it, 
and I believe that the old New Englander was the 
father of American humor, through the solemn 
manner in which he told comic things, and the 
comic manner in which he told the most serious 
ones. Yes, they are keen of humor, and their ap- 
parent want of appreciation is only due to reserve, 
to self-control." 

And, as an illustration of it, my friend told me the 
following anecdote which, I have no doubt, a good 
many Americans have heard before : 

Mark Twain had lectured to a Maine audience with- 
out raising a single laugh in his listeners, when, at the 
close, he was thanked by a gentleman who came to 
him in the green-room, to tell him how hugely every 
one had enjoyed his amusing stories. When the lee- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



171 



turer expressed his surprise at this announcement, 
as the audience had not laughed, the gentleman 
added : 

"Yes, we never were so amused in our lives, and if 
you had gone on five fninutes more, upon my word 
I don't think we could have held out any longer." 

Such is New England self-control. 




CHAPTER* XIX. 

A Lovely Ride to Canada — Quebec, a Corner 
OF Old France Strayed up and Lost in the 
Snow — The French Canadians — The Parties 
IN Canada — Will the Canadians Become Yan- 
kees ? 



Montreal, February i. 

THE ride from the State of Maine to Montreal is 
very picturesque, even in the winter. It offers 
you four or five hours of Alpine scenery through the 
American Switzerland. The White Mountains, com- 
manded by Mount Washington, are, for a distance of 
about forty miles, as wild and imposing as anything 
the real Switzerland can supply the tourist. Gorges, 
precipices, torrents, nothing is wanting. 

Nearly the whole time we journeyed across pine 
forests, coming, now and then, across saw mills, and 
little towns looking like bee-hives of activity. Now 
there was an opening, and frozen rivers, covered with 
snow, formed, with the fields, a huge uniform mass of 
dazzling whiteness. The effect, under a pure blue sky 
and in a perfectly clear atmosphere, was very beautiful. 
Now the country became hilly again. On the slopes, 
right down to the bottom of the valle}^ we saw Berlin 
Falls, bathing its feet in the river. The yellow houses 
with their red roofs and gables, rest the eyes from that 

172 



A FREXCHMA.y LV AMERICA. 



173 



long stretch of blue and white. How beautiful this 
town and its surroundings must be in the fall, when 
Dame Nature in America puts on her cloak of gold 
and scarlet ! All the country on the line we traveled 
is engaged in the lumber trade. 

For once I had an amiable conductor in the parlor 
car ; even more than 
amiable — quite friendly 
and familiar. He put 
his arms on my shoul- 
ders and got quite pa- 
tronizing. I did not 
mind that a bit. I hate 
anonymous landscapes, 
and he explained and 
named everything to 
me. My innocence of 
American things in 
general touched him. 
He was a great treat 
after those " ill-licked 
bears " that you so 

r. . ■ THE AXUABLE CONDUCTOR. 

often come across m 

the American cars. He went further than that 
kindly recommended me to the Canadian custom- 
house ofificers, when we arrived at the frontier, and 
the examination of my trunk and valise did not last 
half a minute. 

Altogether, the long journey passed rapidly and 
agreeably. We were only two people in the parlor 
car, and my traveling companion proved a very pleas- 
ant man. First, I did not care for the look of him. 




he 



■''» A FRENCHMAX l.V AMEKICA. 

He had a new silk hat on, a muhicolored satin cravat 

ered w,th s,lk embroidery work, green, blue, and pink- 
a coa w.th silk facings, patent-leather bo^ts. ^1 : 
gether he was rather dressed for a garden partv fin 
more than doubtful taste) than for a hVen hoS" 
way journey. But in America the cars are so luxurious 
and kept so warm that traveling dresses are not knoum 

of tweed and rough materials, all these things are un. 
necessary and therefore unknown. I soon f^und out 
however that this quaintly got-up man was interesti g 
to speak to He knew every bit of the country wf 
passed and, being easily drawn out. he poured into n y 
ears mformat.on that was as rapid as it was valuable He 

Ts;: eTf ;"' '"''•^" '° '^"^P^ — ' '™" 
roHed m T "'"' ^'''' "thusiasm, wh.ch en- 

rolled my sympathy, and he had enjoyed my lecture 
wh.ch, you may imagine, secured for his intelligence 
and h,s good taste my boundless admiration When 
we arrived at Montreal, we were a pair of friends. 

I begin my Canadian tour here on Monday and then 

shall go West. I was in Quebec two years ago but 

he dear old place is not on my list fhis tim'e ' No 

words could express my regret. I shall never forget 

my feehngs on anding under the great cliff on whfch 

ands the c.tadeh and on driving, bumped along i^a 

le.gh over the half-thawed snow, in the streef that 

hes under the fortress, and on through the other quain 

w.ndmg steep streets, and again under the majestic 

archways to the upper town, where I was set down at 



I 



J FREh'CHMAN IN AMERICA. 1 75 

the door of the Florence, a quiet, delightful little hotel 
that the visitor to Quebec should not fail to stop at, if 
he like home comforts and care to enjoy magnificent 
scenery from his window. It seemed as though I was 
in France, in my dear old Brittany. It looked like St. 
Malo strayed up here and lost in the snow. The illu- 
sion became complete when I saw the gray houses, 
heard the people talk with the Breton intonation, and 
saw over the shops Langlois, Maillard, Clouet, and all 
the names familiar to my childhood. But why say 
"illusion"? It was a fact: I was in France. These 
folks have given their faith to England, but, as the 
Canadian poet says, they have kept their hearts for 
France. Not only their hearts, but their manners and 
their language. Oh, there was such pleasure in it all! 
The lovely weather, the beautiful scenery, the kind wel- 
come given to me, the delight of seeing these children 
of Old France, more than three thousand miles from 
home, happy and thriving^a feast for the eyes, a feast 
for the heart. And the drive to Montmorency Falls 
in the sleigh, gliding smoothly along on the hard snow! 
And the sleighs laden with wood for the Quebec folks, 
the carmen stimulating their horses with a line la or Jmc 
done ! And the return to the Florence, where a good 
dinner served in a private room awaited us ! And that 
polite, quiet, attentive French girl who waited on us, 
the antipodes of the young Yankee lady who makes 
you sorry that breakfasting and dining are necessary, 
in some American hotels, and whose waiting is like 
taking sand and vinegar with your food ! 

The mere spanking along through the cold, brisk 
air, when you ar» well muffled in furs is exhilarating, 



176 



A FRENCHMAAr JAr AMERICA. 



eeoal when the sun is shining in a cloudless blue 
sky The beaufful scenery at Quebec was. besides, a 
feast for eyes tired with the monotonous flatness of 
Amenca. The old city is on a perfect mountain and 
as we came bumping down its side in our sleigh over 
the roads winch were there in a perfect state of sher- 
bet, there was a lovely picture spread out in front of 




'■that quiet, attentive FRENCH GIRI.." 



s. In the distance the bluest mountains I ever saw 
(to pamt them one must use pure cobalt); away to the 
nght the frozen St. Lawrence and the Isle of Orleans 
all snow-covered of course, but yet distinguishable 
from the farm lands of Jacques Bonhomme. whose 
cosy, clean cottages we soon began to pass. The long 
nbbon-hke strips of farm were indicated by the tops of 
the fences peeping through the snow, and told us of 
l^rench thrift and prosperit}-. 



J FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 177 

Yes, it was all delightful. When I left Quebec I felt 
as much regret as I do every time that I leave my little 
native town. 

I have been told that the works of Voltaire are pro- 
hibited in Quebec, not so much because they are irre- 
ligious as because they were written by a man who, 
after the loss of Quebec to the French Crown, ex- 
claimed: "Let us not be concerned about the loss of 
a few acres of snow." The memory of Voltaire is 
execrated, and for having made a flattering reference 
to him on the platform in Montreal two years ago, I 
was near being " boycotted" by the French popula- 
tion. 

The French Canadians take very little interest in 
politics — I mean in outside politics. They are steady, 
industrious, saving, peaceful, and so long as the Eng- 
lish leave them alone, in the safe enjoyment of their 
belongings, they will not give them cause for any 
anxiety. Among the French Canadians there is no 
desire for annexation to the United States. Indeed, 
during the War of Independence, Canada was saved to 
the English Crown by the French Canadians, not be- 
cause the latter loved the English, but because the\' 
hated tlic Yankees. \Vhen Lafayette took it for 
granted that the French Canadians would rally round 
his flag, he made a great mistake; they would have, if 
compelled to fight, used their bullets against the 
Americans. If they had their own way, the French in 
Canada would set up a little country of their own 
under the rule of the Catholic Church, a little corner 
of France two hundred years old. 



'C 



178 



A FKEXCHMAN hV AMERICA. 



The education of the lower classes is at a very low 
stage; thirty per cent, of the children of school age in 
Quebec do not attend school. The English dare not 
introduce gratuitous and compulsory education. They 
have an understanding with the Catholic Church, 
which insists upon exercising entire control over public 
education. The Quebec schools are little more than 
branches of the confessional box. The English shut 
their eyes, for part of the understanding with the 
Church is that the latter will keep loyalty to the Eng- 
lish Crown alive among her submissive flock. 

The tyranny exercised by the Catholic Church may 
easily be imagined from the following newspaper ex- 
tract : 

A well-to-do butcher of Montreal attended the Catholic Church 
at He Perrault last Sunday. He was suffering at the time with 
acute crainps, and when that part of the service arrived during 
which the congregation kneel, he found himself unal)le to do more 
than assume a reclining devotional position, wi^h one knee on the 
floor. His action was noticed, and the church-warden, in concert 
with others, had him brought before the court charged wilh an act 
of irreverence, and he was fined $8 and costs. 

Such a judgment does not only expose the tyranny 
of the Catholic Church, but the complicity of the 
English, who uphold Romanism in the Province of 
Quebec as they uphold Buddhism in India, so as not 
to endanger the security of their possessions. 

The French Canadians are multiplying so rapidly 
thjt in a very few years the Province of Quebec will 
be as French as the town of Quebec itself. Everyday 
they push their advance from east to west. They 
generally marry very young. When a lad is seen in 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



179 



the company of a girl, he is asked by the priest if he is 
courting that girl. In which case he is bidden to go 
straightway to the altar, and these young couples rear 




AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRIEST. 



families of twelve and fifteen children, none of whom 
leave the country. The English have to make room 
for them. 



l8o A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

The average attendance in Catholic churches on 
Sundays in Montreal is 111,483 ; in the sixty churches 
that belong to the different Protestant denominations, 
the average attendance is 34,428. The former num- 
ber has been steadily increasing, the latter steadily de- 
creasing. 

What IS the future reserved to French Canada, and 
indeed to the whole Dominion ? 

There are only two political parties. Liberals and 
Conservatives, but I find the population divided into 
four camps: Those in favor of Canada, an indepen- 
dent nation ; those in favor of the political union of 
Canada and the United States ; those in favor of Can- 
ada going into Imperial Federation, and those in favor 
of Canada remaining an English colony, or in other 
words, in favor of the actual state of things. 

Of course the French Canadians are dead against 
going into Imperial Federation, which would simply 
crush them, and Canadian " society " is in favor of re- 
maining English. The other Canadians seem pretty 
equally divided. 

It must be said that the annexation idea has been 
making rapid progress of late years, among prominent 
men as well as among the people. The Americans 
will never fire one shot to have the idea realized. If 
ever the union becomes an accomplished fact, it will be- 
come so with the assent of all parties. The task will 
be made easy through Canada and the United States 
having the same legislature. The local and provincial 
governments are the same in the Canadian towns and 
provinces as they are in the American towns and 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. l8l 

States — a House of Representatives, a Senate, and a 
Governor, with this difference, this great difference, 
to the present advantage of Canada: whereas every 
four years the Americans elect a new master, who ap- 
points a ministry responsible to himself alone, the 
Canadians have a ministry responsible to their parlia- 
ment, that is, to themselves. The representation of 
the American people at Washington is democratic, but 
the government is autocratic. In Canada, both legis- 
lature and executive are democratic, as in England, 
that greatest and truest of all democracies. 

The change in Canada would have to be made on 
the American plan. 

With the exception of Quebec and parts of Mon- 
treal, Canada is built like America ; the country has 
the same aspect, the currency is the same. Suppress 
the Governor-General in Ottawa, who is there to re- 
mind Canada that she is a dependency of the English 
Crown, strew the country with more cuspidores, and 
you have part of Jonathan's big farm. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Montreal — The City— Mount Royal— Canadian 
Sports — Ottawa — The Government — Rideau 
Hall. 

Montreal^ February 2. 

MONTREAL is a large and well-built city, con- 
taining many buildings of importance, mostly 
churches, of which about thirty are Roman Catholic, 
and over sixty are devoted to Protestant worship, in 
all its branches and variations, from the Anglican 
church to the Salvation Army. 

I arrived at a station situated on a level with the 
St. Lawrence River. From it, we mounted in an om- 
nibus up, up, up, through narrow streets full of shops 
with Breton or Norman names over them, as in Que- 
bec ; on through broader ones, where the shops grew 
larger and the names became more frequently English ; 
on, on, till I thought Montreal had no end, and, at last 
alighted on a great square, and found myself at the 
door of the Windsor Hotel, an enormous and fine 
construction, which has proved the most comfortable, 
and, in every respect the best hotel I have yet stopped 
at on the great American continent. It is about a 
quarter of a mile from my bedroom to the dining-hall, 
which could, I believe, accommodate nearly a thousand 
guests. 

My first visit was to an afternoon " At Home/' given 

182 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



183 



by the St. George's Club, who have a club-house high 
up on Mount Royal. It was a ladies' day, and there was 
music, dancing, etc. We went in a sleigh up the very 
steep hill, much to my astonishment. I should have 
thought the thing practically impossible. On our way 
we passed a toboggan slide down the side of Mount 
Royal, It took my breath away to think of coming 
down it at the rate 
of over a mile a min- 
ute. The view from 
the club-house was 
splendid, taking in a 
great sweep of snow- 
covered country, the 
city and the frozen 
St. Lawrence. There 
are daily races on the 
river, and last year 
they ran tram-cars 
on it. 

It was odd to hear 
the phrase, " after the flood." When I came to 
inquire into it, I learned that when the St. Lawrence 
ice breaks up, the lower city is flooded, and this is 
yearly spoken of as " the flood." 

I drove back from the club with my manager and 
two English gentlemen, who are here on a visit. As 
we passed the toboggan slide, my manager told me of 
an old gentleman over sixty, who delights in those 
breathless passages down the side of Mount Royal. 
One may see him out there "at it," as early as ten in 
the morning. Plenty of people, however, try one ride 




THE OLD GENTLEMAN AND THE 
TOBOGGAN SLIDE. 



1 84 



A FRENCHMAN. IN AMERICA. 



and never ask for another. One gentleman my man- 
ager told me of, after having tried it, expressed pretty 
well the feelings of many others. He said, " I wouldn't 
do it again for two thousand dollars, but I wouldn't 
have missed it for three." I asked one of the two Eng- 
lishmen who accompanied us, whether he had had a 

try. He was a 
quiet, solemn, 
middle-aged Eng- 
lishman. "Well," 
he said, "yes, I 
have. It had to 
be done, and I 
did it." 

Last night I was 
most interested in 
watching the mem- 
bers of the Snow- 
shoe Club start 
from the Windsor, 
on a kind of a 
picnic over the 
country. Their 
costumes were 
very picturesque; 
a short tunic of woolen material fastened round the 
waist by a belt, a sort of woolen nightcap, with tassel 
falling on the shoulder, thick woolen stockings, and 
knickerbockers. 

In Russia and the northern parts of the United States, 
the people say : " It's too cold to go out." In Canada, 
they say : " It's very cold, let's all go out." Only rain 




A SNOVVSHOER. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 1 85 

keeps them indoors. In the coldest weather, with a tem- 
perature of many degrees below zero, you have great 
difficulty in finding a closed carriage. All, or nearly 
all, are open sleighs. The driver wraps you up in 
furs, and as you go, gliding on the snow, your face is 
whipped by the cold air, you feel glowing all over 
with warmth, and altogether the sensation is delightful. 
This morning, Joseph Howarth, the talented Ameri- 
can actor, breakfasted with me and a few friends. 
Last night, I went to see him play in Steele Mackaye's 
" Paul Kauvar." Canada has no actors worth mention- 
ing, and the people here depend on American artists 
for all their entertainments. It is wonderful how the 
feeling of independence engenders and develops the 
activity of the mind in a country. Art and liter- 
ature want a home of their own, and do not flourish in 
other people's houses. Canada has produced nothing 
in literature : the only two poets she can boast are 
French, Louis Frechette and Octave Cremazie. It is 
not because Canada has no time for brain productions. 
America is just as busy as she is, felling forests and 
reclaiming the land ; but free America, only a hundred 
years old as a nation, possesses already a list of his- 
torians, novelists, poets, and essayists, that would do 
honor to any nation in the world. 

February 4. 

I had capital houses in the Queen's Hall last night 
and to-night. 

The Canadian audiences are more demonstrative 
than the American ones, and certainly quite as keen 
and appreciative. When you arrive on the platform 



1 86 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

they are glad to see you, and they let you know it ; a 
fact which in America, in New England especially, 
you have to find out for yourself. 

Montreal possesses a very wealthy and fashionable 
community, and what strikes me most, coming as I do 
from the United States, is the stylish simplicity of the 
women. I am told that Canadian women in their 
tastes and ways have always been far more English 
than American, and that the fashions have grown 
more and more simple since Princess Louise gave the 
example of always dressing quietly when occupying 
Rideau Hall in Ottawa. 

Ottawa, February 5. 

One of the finest sights I have yet seen in this 
country was from the bridge on my way from the 
station to the Russell this morning. On the right the 
waterfalls, on the left, on the top of a high and almost 
perpendicular rock, the Houses of Parliament, a grand 
pile of buildings in gray stone, standing out clear 
against a cloudless, intense blue sky. The Russell is 
one of those huge babylonian hotels so common on 
the American continent, where unfortunately the 
cookery is not on a level with the architectural preten- 
sions ; but most of the leading Canadian politicians are 
boarding here while Parliament is sitting, and I am 
interested to see them. 

After visiting the beautiful library and other parts 
of the government buildings, I had the good luck to 
hear, in the House of Representatives, a debate be- 
tween Mr. Chapleau, a minister and one of the leaders 
of the Conservatives now in ofifice, and Mr. Laurier, 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



187 



one of the chiefs of the Opposition. Both gentlemen 
are French, It was a fight between a tribune and a 
scholar ; between a short, thickset, long-maned lion, 
and a tall, slender, delicate fox. 

After lunch, I went to Rideau Hall, the residence of 
the Governor-General, Lord Stanley of Preston. The 




"the radiant, lovely canadienne." 



executive mansion stands in a pretty park well wooded 
with firs, a mile out of the town. His Excellency was 
out, but his aid-de-camp, to whom I had a letter of 
introduction, most kindly showed me over the place. 
Nothing can be more simple and unpretentious than 
the interior of Rideau Hall. It is furnished like any 
comfortable little provincial hotel patronized by the 
gentry of the neighborhood. The panels of the draw- 



IS« A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

ing-room were painted by Princess Louise, when she 
occupied the house with the Marquis of Lome some 
eight or ten years ago. This is the only touch of 
luxury about the place. In the time of Lord Dufferin, 
a ball-room and a tenniscourt were added to the build- 
ing, and these are among the many souvenirs of his 
popular rule. As a diplomatist, as a viceroy, and as 
an ambassador, history will one day record that this 
noble son of Erin never made a mistake. 

In the evening, I lectured in the Opera House to a 
large audience. 



Kingston, February 6. 

This morning, at the Russell, I was called at the 
telephone. It was His Excellency, who was asking me 
to lunch at Rideau Hall. I felt sorry to be obliged to 
leave Ottawa, and thus forego so tempting an invita- 
tion. 

Kingston is a pretty little town on the border of 
Lake Ontario, possessing a university, a penitentiary, 
and a lunatic asylum, in neither of which I made my 
appearance to-night. But as soon as I had started 
speaking on the platform of the Town Hall, I began to 
think the doors of the lunatic asylum had been care- 
lessly left open that night, for close under the window 
behind the platform, there began a noise which was 
like Bedlam let loose. Bedlam with trumpets and 
other instruments of torture. It was impossible to go 
on with the lecture, so I stopped. On inquiry, the 
unearthly din was found to proceed from a detachment 
of the Salvation Army outside the building. After 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



189 



some parleying, they consented to move on and storm 
some other citadel. 

But it was a stormy evening, and peace was not yet. 




A SALVATIONIST. 



As soon as I had fairly restarted, a person in the 
audience began to show signs of disapproval, and 



I go A FRENCHMAN. IN AMERICA. 

twice or thrice he gave vent to his disapproval rather 
loudly. 

I was not surprised to learn, at the close of the even- 
ing, that this individual had come in with a free pas's. 
He had been admitted on the strength of his being an- 
nounced to give a " show " of some sort himself a week 
later in the hall. 

If a man is inattentive or creates a disturbance at 
any performance, you may take it for granted that his 
ticket was given to him. He never paid for it. 

To-morrow I go to Toronto, where I am to give two 
lectures. I had not time to see that city properly on 
my last visit to Canada, and all my friends prophesy 
that I shall have a good time. 

So does the advance booking, I understand. 




CHAPTER XXI. 

Toronto— The City— The Ladies— The Sports 
— Strange Contrasts— The Canadian Schools. 



Toronto, February g. 

HAVE passed three very pleasant days in this city, 
and had two beautiful audiences in the Pavilion. 

Toronto is a thoroughly American city in appear- 
ance, but only in appearance, for I find the inhabitants 
British in heart, in tastes, and habits. When 1 say 
that it is an American city, I mean to say that Toronto 
is a large area, covered with blocks of parallelograms 
and dirty streets, overspread with tangles of telegraph 
and telephone wires. The hotels are perfectly Ameri- 
can in every respect. 

The suburbs are exceedingly pretty. Here once 
more are fine villas standing in large gardens, a sight 
rarely seen near an American city. It reminds me of 
England. I admire many buildings, the University* 
especially. 

English-looking, too, are the rosy faces of the To- 
ronto ladies whom I passed in my drive. How charm- 
ing they are with the peach-like bloom that their out- 
door exercise gives them ! 

I should like to be able to describe, as it deserves, 

* Destroyed by fire three days after I left Toronto. 



192 A FRENCHMAN .IN AMERICA. 

the sight of these Canadian women in their sleighs, as 
the horses fly along with bells merrily jingling, the 
coachman in his curly black dogskin and huge busby 
on his head. Furs float over the back of the sleigh, 
and, in it, muffled up to the chin in sumptuous skins 
and also capped in furs, sits the radiant, lovely Cana- 
dienne, the milk and roses of her complexion enhanced 
by the proximity of the dark furs. As they skim past 
over the white snow, under a glorious sunlit blue sky, 
I can call to mind no prettier sight, no more beautiful 
picture, to be seen on this huge continent, so far as I 
have got yet. 

One cannot help being struck, on coming here from 
the United States, at the number of lady pedestrians 
in the streets. They are not merely shopping, I am 
assured, nor going straight from one point to another 
of the town, but taking their constitutional walks in 
true English fashion. My impresario took me in the 
afternoon to a club for ladies and gentlemen, and 
there I had the, to me, novel sight of a game of hockey. 
On a large frozen pond there was a party of young 
people engaged in this graceful and invigorating game, 
and not far off was a group of little girls and boys im- 
itating their elders very sensibly and, as it seemed to 
me, successfully. The clear, healthy complexion of 
the Canadian women is easy to account for, when one 
sees how deep-rooted, even after transplantation, is the 
good British love of exercise in the open air. 

Last evening I was taken to a ball, and was able to 
see more of the Canadian ladies than is possible in 
furs, and on further acquaintance I found them as de- 
lightful in manners as in appearance ; English in their 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



193 



coloring and in their simplicity of dress, American in 
their natural bearing and in their frankness of speech. 

Churches, churches, everywhere. In my drive this 




A HOCKEY PLAYER. 



afternoon, I counted twenty-eight in a quarter of an 
hour. They are of all denominations, Catholic, Angli- 
can, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, etc., etc. The 



194 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

Canadians must be still more religious — I mean still 
more church-going — than the English. 

From seven in the evening on Saturday, all the tav- 
erns are closed, and remain closed throughout Sunday. 
In England the Bible has to compete with the gin 
bottle, but here the Bible has all its own way on Sun- 
days. Neither tram-car, omnibus, cab, nor hired car- 
riage of any description is to be seen abroad. Scotland 
itself is outdone completely ; the land of John Knox 
has to take a back seat. 

The walls of this city of churches and chapels are at 
the present moment covered with hugh coarse posters 
announcing in loud colors the arrival of a company of 
performing women. Of these posters, one represents 
Cleopatra in a bark drawn through the water by 
nude female slaves. Another shows a cavalcade of 
women dressed in little more than a fig-leaf. Yet an- 
other represents the booking-ofifice of the theater 
stormed by a crowd of blas(f-\ooVi\x\g, single eye-glassed 
old beaux, grinning with pleasure in anticipation of 
the show within. Another poster displays the charms 
of the proprietress of the undertaking. You must 
not, however, imagine any harm of the performers 
whose attractions are so liberally placarded. They 
are taken to their cars in the depot immediately 
after the performance and locked up ; there is an 
announcement to that effect. These placards are 
merely, eye-ticklers. But this mixture of churches, 
strict Sabbatarianism, and posters of this kind, is 
part of the eternal history of the Anglo-Saxon race — 
violent contrast. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 195 

A school inspector has kindly shown me several 
schools in the town. 

The children of rich and poor alike are educated 
together in the public schools, from which they get 
promoted to the high schools. All these schools are 
free. Boys and girls sit on the same benches and re- 
ceive the same education, as in the United States. 
This enables the women in the New World to com- 
pete with men for all the posts that we Europeans 
consider the monopoly of man ; it also enables them 
to enjoy all the intellectual pleasures of life. If it 
does not prevent them, as it has yet to be proved 
that it does, from being good wives and mothers, the 
educational system of the New World is much superior 
to the European one. It is essentially democratic. 
Europe will have to adopt it. 

Society in the Old World will not stand long on its 
present basis. There will always be rich and poor, but 
every child that is born will require to be given a 
chance, and, according as he avails himself of it or 
not, will be successful or a failure. But give him a 
chance, and the greatest and most real grievance of 
mankind in the present day will be removed. 

Every child that is born in America, whether in the 
United States or in Canada, has that chance. 



=-^ 



CHAPTER XXII. 

West Canada — Relations between British and 
Indians — Return to the United States — 
Difficulties in the Way— Encounter with 
an American Custom-House Officer. 



In the train from. Canada to Chicago, February 15. 

LECTURED in Bowmanville, Ont., on the 12th, 
-/ in Brantford on the 13th, and in Sarnia on the 
14th, and am now on my way to Chicago, to go from 
there to Wisconsin and Minnesota. 

From Brantford I drove to the Indian Reservation, 
a few miles from the town. This visit explained to 
me why the English are so successful with their 
colonies : they have inborn in them the instinct of 
diplomacy and government. 

Whereas the Americans often swindle, starve, and 
shoot the Indians, the English keep them in comfort. 
England makes paupers and lazy drunkards of them, 
and they quietly and gradually disappear. She sup- 
plies them with bread, food, Bibles, and fire-water, 
and they become so lazy that they will not even 
take the trouble to sow the land of their reser- 
vations. Having a dinner supplied to them, they 

196 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



197 



give up hunting, riding, and all their native sports, 
and become enervated. They go to school and die 
of attacks of civilization. England gives them 
money to celebrate their national fetes and rejoic- 
ings, and the good Indians shout at the top of 



\ . 7 7' 



' \{<Jilk 




THE BRITISH INDIAN. 



their voices, God save the Queen ! that is — God save 
our pensions ! 

England, or Great Britain, or again, if you prefer, 
Greater Britain, goes further than that. In Brantford, 
in the middle of a large square, you can see the statue 
of the Indian chief Brant, erected to his memory by 
public subscriptions collected among the British 
Canadians. 



190 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

Here lies the secret of John Bull's success as a 
colonizer. To erect a statue to an Indian chief is a 
stroke of genius. 



What has struck me as most American in Canada is, 
perhaps, journalism. 

Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec possess excel- 
lent newspapers, and every little town can boast one 
or two journals. 

The tone of these papers is thoroughly Ameri- 
can in its liveliness — I had almost said, in its 
loudness. All are readable and most cleverly 
edited. Each paragraph is preceded by a neat 
and attractive heading. As in the American papers, 
the editorials, or leading articles, are of secondary 
importance. The main portion of the publication 
is devoted to news, interviews, stories, gossip, jokes, 
anecdotes, etc. 

The Montreal papers are read by everybody in the 
Province of Quebec, and the Toronto papers in the 
Province of Ontario, so that the newspapers published 
in small towns are content with giving all the news of 
the locality. Each of these has a " society " column. 
Nothing is more amusing than to read of the society 
doings in these little towns. " Miss Brown is visiting 
Miss Smith." " Miss Smith had tea with Miss Robin- 
son yesterday." When Miss Brown, or Miss Smith, 
or Miss Robinson has given a party, the names of all 
the guests are inserted as well as what they had for 
dinner, or for supper, as the case may be. So I take 
it for granted that when anybody gives a party, a ball. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 199 

a dinner, a reporter receives an invitation to describe 
the party in the next issue of the paper. 



At nine o'clock this evening, I left Sarnia, on the 
frontier of Canada, to cross the river and pass into the 
United States. The train left the town, and, on 
arriving on the bank of the River St. Clair, was divided 
into two sections which were run on board the ferry- 
boat and made the crossing side by side. The passage 
across the river occupied about twenty minutes. On 
arriving at the other bank, at Port Huron, in the State 
of Michigan, the train left the boat in the same fashion 
as it had gone on board, the two parts were coupled 
together, and the journey on terra fir ma was smoothly 
resumed. 

There is something fascinating about crossing a 
river at night, and I had promised myself some agree- 
able moments on board the ferry-boat, from which I 
should be able to see Port Huron lit up with twinkling 
lights. I was also curious to watch the train boarding 
the boat. But, alas, I had reckoned without my host. 
Instead of star-gazing and riverie, there was in store 
for me a " bad quarter of an hour." 

No sooner had the train boarded the ferry-boat than 
there came to the door of the parlor car a surly-look- 
ing, ill-mannered creature, who roughly bade me come 
to the baggage van, in the other section of the train, 
and open my trunks for him to inspect. 

As soon as I had complied, he went down on his 
knees among my baggage, and it was plain to see that 
he meant business. 



200 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

The first thing he took out was a suit of clothes, 
which he threw on the dirty floor of the van. 

"Have these been worn?" he said. 

" They have," I replied. 

Then he took out a blue jacket which I used to 
cross the Atlantic. 




HAVE YOU WORN THIS?" 



"Have you worn this?" 

" Yes, for the last two years." 

" Is that all ?" he said, with a low sardonic grin. 

My trunk was the only one he had to examine, 
as I was the only passenger in the parlor car ; and I 
saw that he meant to annoy me, which, I imagined, he 
could do with perfect impunity. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 201 

The best thing, in fact, the only thing to do was to 
take the misadventure good-humoredly. 

He took out my linen and examined it in 
detail. 

" Have these shirts all been worn ? " 

"Well, I guess they have. But how is it that you, 
an official of the government, seem to ignore the law 
of your own country? Don't you know that if all 
these articles are for my own private use, they are not 
dutiable, whether new or not ? " 

The man did not answer. 

He took out more linen, which he put on the floor, 
and spreading open a pair of unmentionables, he asked 
again : 

" Have you worn this? It looks quite new." 

I nodded affirmatively. 

He then took out a pair of socks. 

*' Have you worn these ? " 

" I don't know," I said. " Have a sniff at 
them." 

He continued his examination, and was about to 
throw my evening suit on the floor. I had up to now 
been almost amused at the proceedings, but I felt my 
good-humor was going, and the lion began to wag its 
tail. I took the man by the arm, and looking at him 
sternly, I said : 

" Now, you put this carefully on the top of some 
other clothes." 

He looked at me and complied. 

By this time all the contents of my large trunk were 
spread on the floor. 

He got up on his feet and said : 



A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 



" Have I looked everywhere ? " 

" No," I said, " you haven't. Do you know how 
the famous Regent diamond, worn by the last kings 

of France on their 
crowns, was smuggled 
into French territory?" 
The creature looked 
at me with an air of 
impudence. 

" No, I don't," he 
replied. 

I explained to him, 
and added: 

"You have not 

looked there'' 

The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the 

quietest man, was fairly roused in me, and on the least 

provocation, I would have given this man a first-class 

hiding. 

He went away, wondering whether I had insulted 
him or not, and left me in the van to repack my trunk 
as best I could, an operation which, I understand, it 
was his duty to perform himself. 




THE CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Chicago (First Visit)— The " Neighborhood " 
OF Chicago— The History of Chicago — Pub- 
lic Servants— A Very Deaf Man. 



Chicago, February 17. 

OH ! a lecturing tour in America ! 
I am here on my way to St. Paul and Min- 
neapolis, 

Just before leaving New York, I saw in a comic 
paper that Bismarck must really now be considered as 
a great man, because, since his departure from ofifice, 
there had been no rumor of his having applied to 
Major Pond to get up a lecturing tour for him in the 
United States. 

It was not news to me that there are plenty of 
people in America who laugh at the European author's 
trick of going to the American platform as soon as he 
has made a little name for himself in his own country. 
The laugh finds an echo in England, especially from 
some journalists who have never been asked to go, 
and from a few men who, having done one tour, think 
it wise not to repeat the experience. For my part, 
when I consider that Emerson, Holmes, Mark Twain, 
have been lecturers, that Dickens, Thackeray, Matthew 
Arnold, Sala, Stanley, Archdeacon Farrar, and many 



204 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



more, all have made their bow to American audiences, 
I fail to discover anything very derogatory in the pro- 
ceeding. 

Besides, I feel bound to say that there is nothing in 
a lecturing tour in America, even in a highly success- 
ful one, that can ex- 
''=^^'!^^C,— — ^ cite the envy of the 
most jealous "fail- 
ure" in the world. 
Such work is about 
the hardest that a 
man, used to the 
comforts of this life, 
can undertake. Ac- 
tors, at all events, 
stop a week, some- 
times a fortnight, in 
the cities they visit ; 
but a lecturer is on 
the road every day, happy when he has not to start 
at night. 

No words can picture the monotony of journeys 
through an immense continent, the sameness of which 
strikes you as almost unbearable. Everything is made 
on one pattern. All the towns are alike. To be in a 
railroad car for ten or twelve hours day after day can 
hardly be called luxury, or even comfort. To have 
one's poor brain matter thus shaken in the cranium is 
terrible, especially when the cranium is not quite full. 
Constant traveling softens the brain, liquefies it, churns 
it, evaporates it, and it runsout of you through all the 
cracks of your head. I own that traveling is comfort- 




A PIG SQUEALING. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 205 

able in America, even luxurious ; but the best fare 
becomes monotonous and unpalatable when the dose 
is repeated every day. 

To-morrow night I lecture in Minneapolis. The 
next night I am in Detroit. Distance about seven 
hundred miles. 

" Can I manage it ? " said I to my impresario, when 
he showed me my route. 

" Why, certn'ly," he replied; "if you catch a train 
after your lecture, I guess you will arrive in time for 
your lecture in Detroit the next day." 

These remarks, in America, are made without a 
smile. 

On arriving at Chicago this morning, I found await- 
ing me at the Grand Pacific Hotel, a letter from my 
impresario. Here is the purport of it: 

I know you have with you a trunk and a small portmanteau. I 
would advise you to leave your trunk at the Grand Pacific, and to 
take with you only the portmanteau, while you are in the neighbor- 
hood of Chicago. You will thus save trouble, expense, etc. 

On looking at my route, I found that the " neighbor- 
hood of Chicago " included St. Paul, Minneapolis, Mil- 
waukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis: 
something like a little two-thousand-mile tour "in the 
neighborhood of Chicago," to be done in about one 
week. 

When I confided my troubles to my American 
friends, I got little sympathy from them. 

"That's quite right," they would say ; " we call the 
neighborhood of a city any place which, by starting 
after dinner, you can reach at about breakfast time the 



2o6 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

next day. You dine, you go on board the car, you 
have a smoke, you go to bed, you sleep, you wake up, 
you dress — and there you are. Do you see ? " 

After all you may be of this opinion, if you do not 
reckon sleeping time. But I do reckon it, when I 
have to spend the night in a closed box, six feet long, 
and three feet wide, and about two feet high, and 
especially when the operation has to be repeated three 
or four times a week. 

And the long weary days that are not spent in 
traveling, how can they be passed, even tolerably, in 
an American city, where the lonely lecturer knows 
nobody, and where there is absolutely nothing to be 
seen beyond the hotels and the dry-goods stores? 
Worse still : he sometimes has the good luck to make 
the acquaintance of some charming people : but he has 
hardly had time to fix their features in his memory, 
when he has to go, probably never to see them again. 

The lecturer speaks for an hour and a half on the 
platform every evening, the rest of his time is exclus- 
ively devoted to keeping silence. Poor fellow! how 
grateful he is to the hotel clerk who sometimes — alas, 
very seldom — will chat with him for a few minutes. 
As a rule the hotel clerk is a mute, who assigns a room 
to you, or hands you the letters waiting for you in the 
box corresponding to your number. His mouth is 
closed. He may have seen you for half a minute only; 
he will remember you. Even in a hotel accommodating 
over a thousand guests, he will know you, he will know 
the number of your room, but he won't speak. He is 
not the only American that won't speak. Every man 




_1F 



THE SLEEPING CAR. 



208 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 






in America who is attending to some duty or other, 
has his mouth closed. I have tried the railroad con- 
ductor, and found him mute. I have had a shot at the 
porter in the Pullman car, and found him mute. I 
..^^^^..^ have endeavored to 

'# ^/''-hil draw out the janitors 

of the halls where I 
was to speak in the 
evening, and I have 
failed. Even the 
negroes won't speak. 
You would imagine 
that speaking was 
prohibited b y t h e 
statute-book. When 
my lecture was over, 
I returned to the 
hotel, and like a cul- 
prit crept to bed. 

How I do love 
New York! It is 
not that it pos- 
sesses a single building that I really care for ; it is be- 
cause it contains scores and scores of delightful people, 
brilliant, affable, hospitable, warm-hearted friends, who 
were kind enough to welcome me when I returned 
from a tour, and in whose company I could break up 
the cobwebs that had had time to form in the corners 
of my mouth. 




THE JANITOR. 



The history of Chicago can be written in a few lines. 
So can the history of the whole of America. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 209 

In about 1830 a man called Benjamin Harris, with 
his family, moved to Chicago, or Fort Dearborn, as it 
was then called. Not more than half a dozen whites, 
all of whom were Indian traders, had preceded them. 
In 1832 they had a child, the first white female born 
in Chicago — now married, called Mrs. S. A. Holmes, 
and the mother of fourteen children. In 1871 Chi- 
cago had over 100,000 inhabitants, and was burned to 
the ground. To-day Chicago has over 1,200,000 in- 
habitants, and in ten years' time will have two mil- 
lions. 

The activity in Chicago is perfectly amazing. And 
I don't mean commercial activity only. Compare 
the following statistics: In the great reading rooms 
of the British Museum, there was an average of 620 
readers daily during the year 1888. In the reading- 
room of the Chicago Public Library, there was an av- 
erage of 1569 each day in the same year. Considering 
that the population of London is nearly five times that 
of Chicago, it shows that the reading public is ten 
times more numerous in Chicago than in London. 

It is a never failing source of amusement to watch 
the ways of public servants in this country. 

I went to pay a visit to a public museum this after- 
noon. 

In Europe, the keepers, that is to say, the servants 
of the public, have cautions posted in the museums, in 
which " the public are requested not to touch." In 
France, they are " begged," which is perhaps a more 
suitable expression, as the museums, after all, belong 
to the public. 



2IO A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

In America, the notice is "Hands off!" This is 
short and to the point. The servants of the pubHc al- 
low you to enter the museums, charge you twenty-five 




THE "BRUSH-UP." 



cents, and warn you to behave well. "Hands off" 
struck me as rather off-banded. 

I really admire the independence of all the servants 
in this country. You may give them a tip, you will 
not run the risk of making them servile or even 
polite. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 211 

The railway conductor says " ticket ! " The word 
please does not belong to his vocabulary any more than 
the words "thank you." He says "ticket" and 
frowns. You show it to him. He looks at it suspi- 
ciously, and gives it back to you with a haughty air 
that seems to say : " I hope you will behave properly 
while you are in my car." 

The tip in America is x\o\. de rigueur as in Europe. 
The cabman charges you so much, and expects noth- 
ing more. He would lose his dignity by accepting a 
tip (many run the risk). He will often ask you for more 
than you owe him ; but this is the act of a sharp 
man of business, not the act of a servant. In doingso, 
he does not derogate from his character. 

The negro is the only servant who smiles in Amer- 
ica, the only one who is sometimes polite and attentive, 
and the only one who speaks English with a pleasant 
accent. 

The negro porter in the sleeping cars has seldom 
failed to thank me for the twenty-five or fifty cent 
piece I always give him after he has brushed — or 
rather, swept — my clothes with his little broom. 

A few minutes ago, as I was packing my valise for 
a journey to St. Paul and Minneapolis to-night, the 
porter brought in a card. The name was unknown 
to me ; but the porter having said that it was the 
card of a gentleman who was most anxious to speak 
to me, I said, " Very well, bring him here." 

The gentleman entered the room, saluted me, 
shook hands, and said • 

"I hope I am not intruding." 



212 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

"Well," said I, " I must ask you not to detain me 
long, because I am off in a few minutes." 

" I understand, sir, that some time ago you were en- 
gaged in teaching the French language in one of the 
great public schools of England." 

" I was, sir," I replied. 

" Well, I have a son whom I wish to speak French 
properly, and I have come to ask for your views 




on the subject. In other words, will you be good 
enough to tell me what are the best methods for 
teaching this language ? Only excuse me, I am 
very deaf." 

He pulled out of his back pocket two yards of gutta- 
percha tube, and, applying one end to his ear and 
placing the other against my mouth, he said, " Go 
ahead." 

" Really ? " I shouted through the tube. " Now 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 213 

please shut your eyes ; nothing is better for increasing 
the power of hearing." 

The man shut his eyes and turned his head side- 
ways, so as to have the listening ear in front of me. 
I took my valise and ran to the elevator as fast as I 
could. 

That man may still be waiting for aught I know and 
care. 

Before leaving the hotel, I made the acquaintance 
of Mr. George Kennan, the Russian traveler. His 
articles on Russia and Siberia, published in the Cen- 
tury Magazine, attracted a great deal of public atten- 
tion, and people everywhere throng to hear him relate 
his terrible experiences on the platform. He has two 
hundred lectures to give this season. He struck me 
as a most remarkable man — simple, unaffected in his 
manner, with unflinching resolution written on his 
face ; a man in earnest, you can see. I am delighted 
to find that I shall have the pleasure of meeting him 
again in New York in the middle of April. He looks 
tired. He, too, is lecturing in the " neighborhood of 
Chicago," and is off now to the night train for Cincin- 
nati. 




CHAPTER XXIV. 

St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Sister Cities — Ri- 
valries AND Jealousies between Large Amer- 
ican Cities — Minnehaha Falls — Wonderful 
Interviewers — My Hat gets into Trouble 
Again — Electricity in the Air — Forest Ad- 
vertisements — Railway Speed in America. 



SL Paul, Minn., February 20. 

ARRIVED at St. Paul the day before yesterday 
- to pay a professional visit to the two great sister 
cities of the north of America. 

Sister cities ! Yes, they are near enough to shake 
hands and kiss each other, but I am afraid they avail 
themselves of their proximity to scratch each other's 
faces. 

If you open Bouillet's famous Dictionary of "History 
and Geography (edition 1880), you will find in it neither 
St. Paul nor Minneapolis. I was told yesterday that 
in 1834 there was one white inhabitant in Minneapo- 
lis. To-day the two cities have about 200,000 inhabi- 
tants each. Where is the dictionary of geography that 
can keep pace with such wonderful phantasmagoric 
growth ? The two cities are separated by a distance 
of about nine miles, but they are every day growing 

214 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 215 

up toward each other, and to-morrow they will practi- 
cally have become one. 

Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which 
exist between the different large cities of the United 
States, and when these rival places are close to each 
other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to 
become highly entertaining. 

St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into 
the census names from tombstones, and it is affirmed 
that young men living in either one of the cities 
will marry girls belonging to the other so as to de- 
crease its population by one. The story goes 
that once a preacher having announced, in a Min- 
neapolis church, that he had taken the text of his 
sermon from St. Paul, the congregation walked out 
£71 masse. 

New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at 
Boston. On the other hand, Boston hates Chicago, 
and vice versa. St. Louis has only contempt for Chi- 
cago, and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and 
Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone 
in their prosperity. They are so far away from the 
east and north of America, that the feeling they in- 
spire is only one of indifference. 

" Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging- 
houses," once said a Philadelphian to a New Yorker ; 
" and it spreads over a far greater area than New York, 
with less than half the inhabitants." "Ah," replied 
the New Yorker, "that's because it has been so much 
sat upon." 

" You are a city of commerce," said a Bostonian to 
a New York wit ; " Boston is a city of culture." 



2i6 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

"Yes," replied the New Yorker. "You spell culture 
with a big C, and God with a small g." 

Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each 
other of counting their respective citizens twice over. 
All that is diverting in the highest degree. This feel- 
ing does not exist only between the rival cities of the 
New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man 
what he thinks of Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man 
what he thinks of Glasgow ! 

On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees 
below zero), I have not been able to see much either of 
St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and I am unable to please 
or vex either of these cities by pointing out their 
beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially 
built, with large churches, schools, banks, stores, and 
all the temples that modern Christians erect to Jehovah 
and Mammon. I may say that the Ryan Hotel at St. 
Paul and the West House at Minneapolis are among 
the very best hotels I have come across in America, the 
latter especially. When I have added that, the day 
before yesterday, I had an immense audience in the 
People's Church at St. Paul, and that to-night I have 
had a crowded house at the Grand Opera House in 
Minneapolis, it is hardly necessary for me to say that I 
shall have enjoyed myself in the two great towns, and 
that I shall carry away with me a delightful recollec- 
tion of them. 

Soon after arriving in Minneapolis yesterday, I went 
to see the Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by Long- 
fello\v^ The motor line gave me an idea of rapid tran- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



217 



sit. I returned to the West House for lunch and spent 
the afternoon writing. Many interviewers called. 
The first who came sat down in my room and point- 




" WHAT YEARLY INCOME DOES YOUR BOOKS 
AND LECTURES BRING IN?" 



blank asked me my views on contagious diseases. 
Seeing that I was not disposed to talk on the subject, 
he asked me to discourse on republics and the pros- 



2i8 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

pects of General Boulanger. In fact, anything for 
copy. 

The second one, after asking me where I came from 
and where I was going, inquired whether I had ex- 
hausted the Anglo-Saxons and whether I should write 
on other nations. After I had satisfied him, he asked me 
what yearly income my books and lectures brought in. 

Another wanted to know why I had not brought my 
wife with me, how many children I had, how old they 
were, and other details as wonderfully interesting to 
the public. By and by I saw he was jotting down a 
description of my appearance, and the different clothes 
I had on! "I will unpack this trunk," I said, "and 
spread all its contents on the floor. Perhaps you would 
be glad to have a look at my things." He smiled : 
" Don't trouble any more," he said ; " I am very much 
obliged to you for your courtesy." 

This morning, on opening the papers, I see that my 
hat is getting into trouble again. I thought that, after 
getting rid of my brown hat and sending it to the editor 
in the town where it had created such a sensation, peace 
was secured. Not a bit. In the Minneapolis yi9//r;/rt/ 
I read the following: 

The attractive personality of the man [allow me to record this for 
the salce of what follows], heightened by his «d^//^/sack coat and 
vest, with a background of yellowish plaid trowsers {sic^ occasional 
glimpses of which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy 
ulster, which swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was 
trimmed with fur collar and cuffs. And then that hat ! On the 
table, carelessly thrown amid a pile of correspondence, was his 
nondescript headgear. One of those half-sombreros affected by the 
wild Western cowboy when on dress parade, an impossible com- 
bination of dark-blue and bottle-green. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 219 

Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft 
black felt hat bought of the best hatter in New York! 
No, nothing is sacred for those interviewers. Dark-blue 
and bottle-green ! Why, did that man imagine that I 
wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining? 

The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of 
electricity. If your fingers come into contact with 
anything metallic, like the hot-water pipes, the chan- 
deliers, the stopper of your washing basin, they draw 
a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who 
called here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was 
able to light my gas with his finger, by merely obtain- 
ing an electric spark on the top of the burner. When 
he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was 
joking. 

I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa, 
for instance. 

Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do 
not know; but it is most bracing and healthy. I have 
never felt so well and hearty in my life as in these cold, 
dry climates. 

I was all the more flattered to have such a large and 
fashionable audience at the Grand Opera House to- 
night, that xny caiiserie was not given under the auspices 
of any society, or as one of any course of lectures. 

I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall 
have to leave Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six 
o'clock for Chicago, which I shall reach at ten in the 
evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan 
Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at 



A FRENCHMAN IN A Af ERICA. 



eleven. Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway 
traveling — 745 miles. 

And still in " the neighborhood of Chicago ! " 

In the train to Chicago, February 2 1 . 
Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here, 




ir YOU' WOULD BE^^„.A^ LOVELY A^ THE. 




BEAUTIFUL "iT?^ '-'^°'^ OE GKAY 

^^^ CKAY '^/* PERFUMES 




AN ADVERTISEMENT. 



in the midst of a forest, I have seen a huge wide 
nailed on two trees, parallel to the railway line, 
was written, round a daub supposed to represent 



board 

On it 

one of 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 22 1 

the loveliest English ladies: " If you would be as lovely 
as the beautiful Lady de Gray, use Gray perfumes." 

Soyez done belle, to be used as an advertisement in 
the forests of Minnesota! , 



My lectures have never been criticised in more kind, 
flattering, and eulogistic terms than in the St. Paul and 
the Minneapolis papers, which I am reading on my 
way to Chicago. I find 
newspaper reading a 
great source of amuse- 
ment in the trains. 
First of all because 
these papers always are 
light reading, and also 
because reading is a 
possibility in a well 
lighted carriage going 
only at a moderate 
speed. Eating is com- 
fortable, and even writ- 
ing is possible e7i route. 
With the exception of 
a few trains, such as are run from New York to Boston, 
Chicago, and half a dozen other important cities, rail- 
way traveling is slower in America than in England 
and France ; but I have never found fault with the 
speed of an American train. On the contrary, I have 
always felt grateful to the driver for running slowly. 
And every time that the car reached the other side 
of some of the many rotten wooden bridges on which 
the train had to pass, I returned thanks. 




"l RETURNED THANKS." 



CHAPTER XXV. 

Detroit — The Town — The Detroit "Free 
Press " — A Lady Interviewer — The " Unco 
GuiD " IN Detroit — Reflections on the 
Anglo-Saxon " Unco Guid." 



Detroit, February 22. 

AM delighted with Detroit. It possesses beautiful 
- streets, avenues, and walks, and a fine square in the 
middle of which stands a remarkably fine monument. 
I am also grateful to this city for breaking the monot- 
ony of the eternal parallelograms with which the 
whole of the United States are built. My national 
vanity almost suggests to me that this town owes its 
gracefulness to its French origin. There are still, I 
am told, about 25,000 French people settled in 
Detroit. 

I have had to-night, in the Church of Our Father, 
a crowded and most brilliant audience, whose keen- 
ness, intelligence, and kindness were very flattering. 

I was interviewed, both by a lady and a gentleman, 
for the Detroit Free Press, that most witty of Ameri- 
can newspapers. The charming young lady inter- 
viewer came to talk on social topics. I remarked that 
she was armed with a copy of " Jonathan and his 
Continent," and I came to the conclusion that she 




THE LADY INTERVIEWER. 



224 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

would probably ask for a few explanations about that 
book. I was not mistaken. She took exception, she 
informed me, to many statements concerning the 
American girl in the book. I made a point to prove 
to her that all was right, and all was truth, and I think 
I persuaded her to abandon the prosecution. 

To tell the truth, now the real truth, mind you, I 
am rather tired of hearing about the American girl. 
The more I see of her the more I am getting con- 
vinced that she is — like the other girls in the world. 

A friend, who came to have a chat with me after this 
lecture, has told me that the influential people of the 
city are signing a petition to the custodians of the 
museum calling upon them to drape all the nude 
statues, and intimating their intention of boycotting 
the institution, if the Venuses and Apollos are not 
forthwith provided with tuckers and togas. 

It is a well-known fact in the history of the world, 
that young communities have no taste for fine art — 
they have no time to cultivate it. If I had gone to 
Oklahoma, I should not have expected to find any art 
feeling at all ; but that in a city like Detroit, where 
there is such evidence of intellectual life and high 
culture among the inhabitants, a party should be 
found numerous and strong enough to issue such a 
heathen dictate as this seems scarcely credible. I am 
inclined to think it must be a joke. That the " unco 
guid " should flourish under the gloomy sky of Great 
Britain I understand, but under the bright blue sky of 
America, in that bracing atmosphere, I cannot. 

It is most curious that there should be people who. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



225 



when confronted with some glorious masterpiece of 
sculpture, should not see the poetry, the beauty of the 




THE DRAPED STATUES. 



human form divine. This is beyond me, and beyond 
any educated Frenchman. 

Does the "unco guid " exist in America, then ? I 



2 26 A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 

should have thought that these people, of the earth 
earthy, were not found out of England and Scotland. 

When I was in America two years ago, I heard that 
an English author of some repute, talking one day 
with Mr. Richard Watson Gilder about the Venus of 
Milo, had remarked that, as he looked at her beautiful 
form, he longed to put his arms around her and kiss 
her. Mr. Gilder, who, as a poet, as an artist, has felt 
only respect mingled with his admiration of the match- 
less divinity, replied : " I hope she would have grown 
a pair of arms for the occasion, so as to have slapped 
your face." 

It is not so much the thing that offends the " unco 
guid " ; it is the name, the reflection, the idea. Un- 
healthy-minded himself, he dreads a taint where there 
is none, and imagines in others a corruption which 
exists only in himself. 

Yet the One, whom he would fain call Master, but 
whose teachings he is slow in following, said : " Woe be 
to them by whom offense cometh." But the " unco 
guid" is a Christian failure, 3. parvenu. 

The parvenu is a person who makes strenuous efforts 
to persuade other people that he is entitled to the 
position he occupies. 

There are parvenus in religion, as there are parvenus 
in the aristocracy, in society, in literature, in the fine 
arts, etc. 

The worst type of the French parvenu is the one 
whose father was a worthy, hard-working man called 
Dubois or Dumont, and who, at his father's death, dubs 
himself du Bois or du Mont, becomes a clericalist and 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



227 




the stanchest monarch- 
ist, and runs down 
the great Revolution 
which made one of his 
grand - parents a man. 
M. dii Bois or du Mont 
outdoes the genuine 
nobleman, who needs 
make no noise to at- 
tract attention to a 
name which everybody 
knows, and which, in 
spite of what may be 
said on the subject, 
often recalls the mem- 
ory of some glorious 
event in the past. 

The worst type of 
Anglo - Saxon parvenu 
is probably the " unco 
guid," or religious par- 
venu. 

The Anglo-Saxon 
" unco guid " is seldom 
to be found among 
Roman Catholics; that 
is, among the followers 
of the most ancient 
Christian religion. He 
is to be found among 
the followers of the newest forms of " Christianity." 
This is quite natural. He has to try to eclipse his 



THE PARVENU. 



2 28 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

fellow-Christians by his piety, in order to show that 
the new religion to which he belongs was a necessary 
invention. 

The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid " is easily recognized. 
He is dark (all bigots and fanatics are). He is dressed 
in black, shiny broadcloth raiment. A wide-brimmed 
felt hat covers his head. He walks with light, short, 
jaunty steps, his head a little inclined on one side. 
He never carries a stick, which might give a rather 
fast appearance to his turn-out. He invariably carries 
an umbrella, even in the brightest weather, as being 
more respectable — and this umbrella he never rolls, for 
he would avoid looking in the distance as if he had a 
stick. He casts right and left little grimaces that are 
so many forced smiles of self-satisfaction. " Try to be 
as good as I am," he seems to say to all who happen 
to look at him, "and you will be as happy." And he 
" smiles, and smiles, and smiles." 

He has a small soul, a small heart, and a small brain. 

As a rule, he is a well-to-do person. It pays better 
to have a narrow mind than to have broad sympathies. 

He drinks tea, but prefers cocoa, as being a more 
virtuous beverage. 

He is perfectly destitute of humor, and is the most 
inartistic creature in the world. Everything suggests 
to him either profanity or indecency. The " Remi- 
niscences of Scottish Life and Character," by Dean 
Ramsay, would strike him as profane, and if placed in 
the Mus^e du Louvre, before the Venus of Milo, he 
would see nothing but a woman who has next to no 
clothes on. 

His distorted mind makes him take everything in ill 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 229 

part. His hands get pricked on every thorn that he 
comes across on the road, and he misses all the roses. 

If I were not a Christian, the following story, which 
is not as often told as it should be, would have con- 
verted me long ago : 

Jesus arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and he 
sent his disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, in- 
tent on doing good, walked through the streets into the market- 
place. And he saw at the corner of the market some people gath- 
ered together, looking at an object on the ground ; and he drew 
near to see what it might he. It was a dead dog, with a halter 
round his neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged 
through the dirt ; and a viler, a more abject, a more unclean thing, 
never met the eyes of man. And those who stood by looked on 
with abhorrence. " Faugh ! " said one, stopping his nose, " it 
pollutes the air." " How long," said another, " shall this foul 
beast offend our sight .'' " " Look at his torn hide," said a third ; 
" one could not even cut a shoe out of it ! " " And his ears," said 
a fourth, "all draggled and bleeding! " " No doubt," said a fifth, 
" he has been hanged for thieving! " And Jesus heard them, and 
looking down compassionately on the dead creature, he said : 
" Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth ! " 

If I understand the Gospel, the gist of its teachings 
is contained in the foregoing little story. Love and 
forgiveness : finding something to pity and admire 
even in a dead dog. Such is the religion of Christ. 

The " Christianity " of the " unco guid " is as like 
this religion as are the teachings of the Old Testa- 
ment. 

Something to condemn, the discovery of wickedness 
in the most innocent, and often elevating, recreations, 
such is the favorite occupation of the Anglo-Saxon 
*' unco guid." Music is licentious, laughter wicked, 



230 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

dancing immoral, statuary almost criminal, and, by 
and by, the " Society for the Suggestion of Inde- 
cency," which is placed under his immediate patron- 
age and supervision, will find fault with our going out 
in the streets, on the plea that under our garments we 
carry our nudity. 

The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" is the successor of 
the Pharisee. In reading Christ's description of the 
latter, you are immediately struck with the likeness. 
The modern "unco guid" " loves to pray standing in 
the churches and chapels and in the corners of the 
streets, that he may be seen of men." " He uses vain 
repetitions, for he thinks that he shall be heard for his 
much speaking." " When he fasts, he is of sad coun- 
tenance ; for he disfigures his face, that he may appear 
unto men to fast." There is not one feature of the 
portrait that does not fit in exactly. 

The Jewish " unco guid " crucified Christ. The 
Anglo-Saxon one would crucify Him again if He should 
return to earth and interfere with the prosperous busi- 
ness firms that make use of His name. 

The "uncoguid's" Christianity consists in extoll- 
ing hisvirtues and ignoring other people's. He spends 
his time in " pulling motes out of people's eyes," but 
cannot see clearly to do it, " owing to the beams that 
are in his own." He overwhelms you, he crushes you, 
with his virtue, and one of the greatest treats is to 
catch him tripping, a chance which you may occasion- 
ally have, especially when you meet him on the Conti- 
nent of Europe. 

The Anglo-Saxon " unco guid " calls himself a 
Christian, but the precepts of the Gospel are the very 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 231 

opposite of those he practices. The gentle, merciful, 
forgiving, Man-God of the Gospel has not for him the 
charms and attractions of the Jehovah who commanded 
the cowardly, ungrateful, and bloodthirsty people of 
his choice to treat their women as slaves, and to ex- 
terminate their enemies, sparing neither old men, 
women, nor children. This cruel, revengeful, implaca- 
ble deity is far more to the Anglo-Saxon " unco 
guid's " liking than the Saviour who bade His disciples 
love their enemies and put up their swords in the 
presence of his persecutors. The " unco guid " is not 
a Christian, he is a Jew in all but name. And I will 
say this much for him, that the Commandments given 
on Mount Sinai are much easier to follow than the 
Sermon on the Mount. It is easier not to commit 
murder than to hold out your right cheek after your 
left one has been slapped. It is easier not to steal 
than to run after the man who has robbed us, in order 
to offer him what he has not taken. It is easier to 
honor our parents than to love our enemies. 

The teachings of the Gospel are trying to human 
nature. There is no religion more difficult to follow; 
and this is why, in spite of its beautiful, but too lofty, 
precepts, there is no religion in the world that can 
boast so many hypocrites — so many followers who 
pretend that they follow their religion, but who do 
not, and very probably cannot. 

Being unable to love man, as he is bidden in the 
Gospel, the " unco guid " loves God, as he is bidden 
in the Old Testament. He loves God in the abstract. 
He tells Him so in endless prayers and litanies. 

For him Christianity consists in discussing theologi- 



232 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

cal questions, whether a minister shall preach with or 
without a white surplice on, and in singing hymns 
more or less out of tune. 

As if God could be loved to the exclusion of man ! 
You love God, after all, as you love anybody else, not 
by professions of love, but by deeds. 

When he prays, the " unco guid " buries his face in 
his hands or in his hat. He screws up his face, and the 
more fervent the prayer is (or the more people are 
looking at him), the more grimaces he makes. Hein- 
rich Heine, on coming out of an English church, said 
that " a blaspheming Frenchman must be a more 
pleasing object in the sight of God than many a pray- 
ing Englishman," He had, no doubt, been looking at 
the " unco guid." 

If you do not hold the same religious views as he 
does, you are a wicked man, an atheist. He alone has 
the truth. Being engaged in a discussion with an 
" unco guid " one day, I told him that if God had 
given me hands to handle, surely He had given me a 
little brain to think. " You are right," he quickly 
interrupted; " but, with the hands that God gave you 
you can commit a good action, and you can also com- 
mit murder." Therefore, because I did not think as 
he did, I was the criminal, for, of course, he was the 
righteous man. For all those who, like myself, believe 
in a future life, there is, I believe, a great treat in store : 
the sight of the face he will make, when his place is 
assigned to him in the next world. Qui inoiirra, verra. 

Anglo-Saxon land is governed by the "unco guid." 
Good society cordially despises him ; the aristocracy 
of Anglo-Saxon intelligence — philosophers, scientists, 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



233 



men of letters, artists — simply loathe him ; but all have 
to bow to his rule, and submit their works to his 
most incompetent criticism, and all are afraid of him. 







THE POOR MAN S SABBATH. 



In a moment of wounded national pride, Sydney 
Smith once exclaimed: "What a pity it is we have 
no amusements in England except vice and religion !" 
The same exclamation might be uttered to-day, and the 



234 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

cause laid at the Anglo-Saxon " unco guid's " door. It 
is he who is responsible for the degradation of the Brit- 
ish lower classes, by refusing to enable them to elevate 
their minds on Sundays at the sight of the master- 
pieces of art which are contained in the museums, or 
at the sound of the symphonies of Beethoven and 
Mozart, which might be given to the people at reduced 
prices on that day. The poor people must choose 
between vice and religion, and as the wretches know 
they are not wanted in the churches, they go to the 
taverns. 

It is tliis same " unco guid" who is responsible for 
the state of the streets in the large cities of Great 
Britain by refusing to allow vice to be regulated. If you 
were to add the amount of immorality to be found in 
the streets of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and the other capitals 
of Europe, no fair-minded Englishman " who knows" 
would contradict me, if I said that the total thus ob- 
tained would be much below the amount supplied by 
London alone ; but the " unco guid " stays at home of 
an evening, advises you to do the same, and ignoring, 
or pretending to ignore, what is going on round his 
own house, he prays for the conversion — of the French. 

The " unco guid " thinks that his own future safety 
is assured, so he prays for his neighbors'. He reminds 
one of certain Scots, who inhabit two small islands on 
the west coast of Scotland. Their piety is really most 
■touching. Every Sunday in their churches, they com- 
mend to God's care '* the puir inhabitants of the two 
adjacent islands of Britain and Ireland." 

A few weeks ago, there appeared in a Liverpool pa- 
per a letter, signed " A Lover of Reverence," in which 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 235 

this anonymous person complained of a certain lec- 
turer, who had indulged in profane remarks. " I was 
not present myself," he or she said, " but have heard of 
what took place," etc. You see, this person was not 
present, but as a good "Christian," he hastened to 
judge. However, this is nothing. In the letter, I 
read: "Fortunately, there are in Liverpool, a few 
Christians, like myself, always on the watch, and 
ever looking after our Maker's honor." 

Fortunate Liverpool ! What a proud position for 
the Almighty, to be placed in Liverpool under the 
protection of the " Lover of Reverence ! ' 

Probably this " unco guid " and myself would not agree 
on the definition of the \vord profanity, for, if I had 
written and published such a letter, I would consider 
myself guilty, not only of profanity, but of blasphemy. 

If the "unco guid" is the best product of Chris- 
tianity, Christianity must be pronounced a ghastly fail- 
ure, and I should feel inclined to exclaim, with the late 
Dean Milman, " If all this is Christianity, it is high 
time we should try something else— say the religion 
of Christ, for instance." 




CHAPTER XXVI. 

Milwaukee— A Well-filled Day — Reflections 
ON THE Scotch in America — Chicago Criti- 
cisms. 



Mihvaiikee, February 25. 

ARRIVED here from Detroit yesterday. Mil- 
. waukee is a city of over two hundred thousand 
inhabitants, a very large proportion of whom are Ger- 
mans, who have come here to settle down, and wish 
good luck to the Vaterland, at the respectful distance 
of five thousand miles. 

At the station I was met by Mr. John L. Mitchell, 
the railway king, and by a compatriot of mine, M. A. 
de Guerville, a young enthusiast who has made up his 
mind to check the German invasion of Milwaukee, and 
has succeeded in starting a French society, composed 
of the leading inhabitants of the city. On arriving, I 
found a heavy but delightful programme to go through 
during the day: a lunch to be given me by the ladies 
at Milwaukee College at one o'clock ; a reception by 
the French Club at Mrs. John L. Mitchell's house at 
four ; a dinner at six ; my lecture at eight, and a recep- 
tion and a supper by the Press Club at half-past ten ; the 
rest of the evening to be spent as circumstances would 
allow or suggest. I was to be the guest of Mr. Mit- 
chell at his magnificent house in town. 

P36 







A CITIZEN OF MILWAUKEE. 



238 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" Good," I said, " let us begin." 1 

Went through the whole programme. The recep- 
tion by the French Club, in the beautiful Moorish- 
looking rooms of Mrs. John L. Mitchell's superb man- 
sion, was a great success. I was amazed to meet so 
many French-speaking people, and much amused to 
see my young compatriot go from one group to an- 
other, to satisfy himself that all the members of the 
club were speaking French ; for I must tell you that, 
among the statutes of the club, there is one that im- 
poses a fine of ten cents on any member caught in 
the act of speaking English at the gatherings of the 
association. 

The lecture was a great success. The New Pl}'m- 
outh Church* was packed, and the audience extremely 
warm and appreciative. The supper offered to me by 
the Press Club proved most enjoyable. And yet, tliat 
was not all. At one o'clock the Press Club repaired 
to a perfect German Brauerei, where we spent an hour 
in Bavaria, drinking excellent Bavarian beer while 
chatting, telling stories, etc. 

I will omit to mention at what time we returned 
home, so as not to tell tales about my kind host. 

In spite of the late hours we kept last night, break- 
fast was punctually served at eight this morning. 
First course, porridge. Thanks to the kind, thoroughly 
Scotch hospitality of Mr. John L. Mitchell and his 

*Very strange, that church with its stalls, galleries, and boxes — 
a perfect theater. From the platform it was interesting to watch 
the immense throng, packing the place from floor to ceiling, in 
front, on the sides, behind, everywhere. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. . 239 

charming family, thanks to the many friends and 
sympathizers I met here, I shall carry away a most 
pleasant recollection of this large and beautiful city. 
I shall leave Milwaukee with much regret. Indeed, 
the worst feature of a thick lecturing tour is to feel, 
almost every day, that you leave behind friends whom 
you may never see again. 

I lecture at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, this 
evening ; but Chicago is reached from here in two 
hours and a half, and I will go as late in the day as I 
can. 

No more beds for me now, until I reach Albany, in 
three days. 

The railway king in Wisconsin is a Scotchman. 
I was not surprised to hear it. The iron king in Penn- 
sylvania is a Scotchman, Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The 
oil king of Ohio is a Scotchman, Mr. Alexander Mac- 
donald. The silver king of California is a Scotchman, 
Mr. Mackay. The dry-goods-store king of New York 
— he is dead now — was a Scotchman, Mr. Stewart. 
It is just the same in Canada, just the same in Aus- 
tralia, and all over the English-speaking world. The 
Scotch are successful everywhere, and the new coun- 
tries offer them fields for their industry, their perse- 
verance, and their shrewdness. There you see them 
landowners, directors of companies, at the head of all 
the great enterprises. In the lower stations of life, 
thanks to their frugality and saving habits, you find 
them thriving everywhere. You go to the manufactory, 
you are told that the foremen are Scotch. 

I have, perhaps, a better illustration still. 



240 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



If you travel in Canada, either by the Grand Trunk 
or the Canadian Pacific, you will meet in the last parlor 
car, near the stove, a man whose duty consists in see- 




TALES OF OLD SCOTLAND, 



ing that, all along the line, the workmen are at their 
posts, digging, repairing, etc. These workmen are all 
day exposed to the Canadian temperature, and often 
have to work knee-deep in the snow. Well, you will 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 241 

find that the man with small, keen eyes, who is able to 
do his work in the railroad car, warming himself com- 
fortably by the stove, is invariably a Scotchman. There 
is only one berth with a stove in the whole business ; 
it is he who has got it. Many times I have had a 
chat with that Scotchman on the subject of old Scot- 
land. Many times I have sat with him in the little 
smoking-room of the parlor car, listening to the his- 
tory of his life, or, maybe, a few good Scotch anec- 
dotes. 

In the train from Chicago to Cleveland, February 2^. 

I arrived in Chicago at five o'clock in the afternoon 
yesterday, dined, dressed, and lectured at the Music 
Hall under the auspices of the Drexel free Kinder- 
garten. There was a large audience, and all passed 
off very well. After the lecture, I went to the Grand" 
Pacific Hotel, changed clothes, and went on board the 
sleeping car bound for Cleveland, O. 

The criticisms of my lecture in this morning's Chicago 
papers are lively. 

The Herald calls me: 

A dapper little Frenchman. Five feet eleven in height, and two 
hundred pounds in weight ! 

The Times says : 

That splendid trinity of the American peerage, the colonel, the 
judge, and the professor, turned out in full force at Central Music 
Hall last night. The lecturer is a magician who serves up your 
many little defects, peculiar to the auditors' own country, on a 




A CKI.EBRATKI) KXliCUTlONER. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



243 



silver salver, so artistically garnished that one forgets the sarcasm 
in admiration of the sauce. 

The Tribune is quite as complimentary and quite as 
lively : 

His satire is as keen as the blade of the celebrated executioner 
who could cut a man's head off, and the unlucky person not know 
it until a pinch of snuff would cause a sneeze, and the decapitated 
head would, much to its surprise, find itself rolling over in the 
dust. 

And after a good breakfast at Toledo station, I en- 
joyed an hour poring over the Chicago papers. 

I lecture in Cleveland to-night, and am still in "the 
neighborhood of Chicago." 




CHAPTER XXVII. 

The Monotony of Traveling in the States — 

" MANON LESCAUT " IN Ametjca. 



hi the train from Cleveland to Albany, February 27. 

AM getting tired and ill. I am not bed-ridden, 
L but am fairly well rid of a bed. I have lately 
spent as many nights in railway cars as in hotel beds. 

Am on my way to Albany, just outside " the neigh- 
borhood of Chicago." I lecture in that place to-night, 
and shall get to New York to-morrow. 

I am suffering from the monotony of life. My 
greatest objection to America (indeed I do not believe 
I have any other) is the sameness of everything. I 
understand the Americans who run away to Europe 
every year to see an old church, a wall covered with 
moss and ivy, some good old-fashioned peasantry not 
dressed like the rest of the world. 

What strikes a European most, in his rambles 
through America, is the absence of the picturesque. 
The country is monotonous, and eternally the same. 
Burned-up fields, stumps of trees, forests, wooden 
houses all built on the same pattern. All the stations 
you pass are alike. All the towns are alike. To say 
that an American town is ten times larger than another 
simply means that it has ten times more blocks of houses. 

344 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



245 



All the streets are alike, with the same telegraph poles, 
the same " Indian " as a sign for tobacconists, the same 
red, white, and blue pole as a sign for barbers. All the 
hotels are the same, 
all the menus are the 
same, all the plates 
and dishes the same 
— why, all the ink- 
stands are the same. 
All the people are 
dressed in the same 
way. When you 
meet an American 
with all his beard, 
you want to shake 
his hands and thank 
him for not shaving 
it, as ninety-nine out 
of every hundred 
Americans do. Of 
course I have not 
seen California, the 
Rocky Mountains, 
and many other parts 
of America where the 

scenery is very beautiful ; but I think my remarks can 
apply to those States most likely to be visited by a 
lecturer, that is, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana Illinois, 
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and others, during the winter 
months, after the Indian summer, and before the re- 
newal of verdure in May. 




THE SAME ' INDIAN. 



246 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



After breakfast, that indefatigable man af business, 
that intolerable bore, who incessantly bangs the doors 
and brings his stock-in-trade to the cars, came and 
whispered in my ears: 

" New book — just out — a forbidden book ! " 
"A forbidden book ! What is that? " I inquired. 
He showed it to me. It was " Manon Lescaut." 
Is it possible? That literary and artistic chef- 
d'ceiivre, which has been the original type of " Paul et 

Virginie" and " Atala " ; 
that touching drama, 
which the prince of critics, 
Jules Janin, declared 
would be sufficient to save 
contemporary literature 
from complete oblivion, 
\^^M^\. ^w^^*^\ dragged in the mire, 

'^^ .—5-*^ . clothed in a dirty coarse 

English garb ! and ad- 
vertised as a forbidden 
book! Three generations 
of French people have 
wept over the pathetic 
story. Here it is now, 
stripped of its unique 
style and literary beauty, sold to the American 
public as an improper book — a libel by translation 
on a genius. British authors have complained for 
years that their, books were stolen in America. They 
have suffered in pockets, it is true, but their reputation 
has spread through an immense continent. What is 
their complaint compared to that of the French au- 




" NEW BOOK JUST OUT — A FOR- 
BHJDEN BOOK ! " 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 247 

thors, who have the misfortune to see their works 
translated into American ? It is not only their pockets 
that suffer, but their reputation. The poor French 
author is at the mercy of incapable and malicious 
translators hired at starvation wages by the American 
pirate publisher. He is liable to a species of defama- 
tion ten times worse than robbery. 

And as I looked at that copy of " Manon Lescaut," 
I almost felt grateful that Prevost was dead. 




CHAPTER XXVIII. 

For the First Time I See an American Paper 
Abuse Me— Albany to New York — A Lecture 
AT Daly's Theater — Afternoon Audiences. 



Nezv York, February 23. 

THE American press has always been very good to 
me. Fairness one has a right to expect, but kind- 
ness is an extra that is not always thrown in, and 
therefore the uniform amiability of the American press 
toward me could not fail to strike me most agreeably. 
Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind 
notice or article, but in the Albany Express of yester- 
day morning I read : 

This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture 
by Max O'Rell, who was in this country two years ago, and was 
treated with distinguished courtesy. When he went home he 
published a book tilled with deliberate misstatements and willful 
exaggerations of the traits of the American people. 

This paper " has reason," as the French say. My 
book contained one misstatement, at all events, and 
that was that " all Americans have a great sense of 
humor." You inay say that the French are a witty 
people, but that does not mean that France contains 
no fools. It is rather jDainful to have to explain such 

2^8 



A FREiYCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



249 



things, but I do so for the benefit of that editor and 
with apologies to the general reader. 

In spite of this diverting little "par," I had an im- 
mense audience last night in Harmanus Bleecker 
Hall, a new and magnificent construction in Albany, 




RIP VAN WINKLE. 



excellent, no doubt, for music, but hardly adapted 
for lecturing in, on account of its long and narrow 
shape. 

I should have liked to stay longer in Albany, which 
struck me as being a remarkably beautiful place, but 
having to lecture in New York this afternoon, I took 
the vestibule train early this morning for New York. 
This journey is exceedingly picturesque along the 



250 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

Hudson River, traveling as you do between two 
ranges of wooded hills, dotted over with beautiful 
habitations, and now and then passing a little town 
bathing its feet in the water. In the distance one gets 
good views of the Catskill Mountains, immortalized by 
Washington Irving in " Rip Van Winkle." 

On boarding the train, the first thing I did was to 
read the news of yesterday. Imagine my amusement, 
on opening the Albany Express to read the following 
extract from the report of my lecture : 

He has an agreeable but not a strong voice. This was the onlj' 
point that could be criticised in his lecture, which consisted of 
many clever sketches of the humorous side of the character of 
different Anglo-Saxon nations. His humor is keen. He evidently 
is a great admirer of America and Americans, only bringing into 
ridicule some of their most conspicuously objectionable traits. . . . 
His lecture was entertaining, clever, witty and thoroughly enjoy- 
able. 

The most amusing part of all this is that the Ameri- 
can sketches which I introduced into my lecture last 
night, and which seemed to have struck the Albany 
Express so agreeably, were all extracts from the book 
" filled with deliberate misstatements and willful ex- 
aggerations of the traits of the American people." 
Well, after all, there is humor, unconscious humor, in 
the Albany Express. 

Arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York 
at noon, I gave up my check to a transfer man, but 
learned to my chagrin that the vestibule train from 
Albany had carried no baggage, and that my things 
would only arrive by the next train at about three 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



251 



o'clock. Pleasant news for a man who was due to 
address an audience at three ! 

There was only one way out of the difficulty. Off 
I went post-haste to a ready-made tailor's, who sold 
me a complete fit-out from head 
to foot. I did not examine the 
cut and fit of each garment very 
minutely, but went off satisfied 
that I was presenting a neat and 
respectable appearance. Before 
going on the stage, however, I 
discovered that the sleeves of the 
new coat, though perfectly smooth 
and well-behaved so long as the 
arms inside them were bent at the 
elbow, developed a remarkable 
cross-twist as soon as I let my| 
arms hang straight down. 

By means of holding it firm 
with the middle finger, I managed 
to keep the recalcitrant sleeve in 
position, and the affair passed off 
very well. Only my friends remarked, after the lec- 
ture, that they thought I looked a little bit stiff, 
especially when making my bow to the audience. 




A LITTLE BIT STIFF. 



My lecture at Daly's Theater this afternoon was 
given under the auspices of the Bethlehem Day Nur- 
sery, and I am thankful to think that this most inter- 
esting association is a little richer to-day than it was 
yesterday. For an afternoon audience it was remark- 
ably warm and responsive. 



252 A FRENCHMAM IN AMERICA. 

I have many times lectured to afternoon audiences, 
but have not, as a rule, enjoyed it. Afternoon " shows " 
are a mistake. Do not ask me why ; but think of 
those you have ever been to, and see if you have a 
lively recollection of them. There is a time for every- 
thing. Fancy playing the guitar under your lady love's 
window by daylight, for instance ! 

Afternoon audiences are kid-gloved ones. There is 
but a sprinkling of men, and so the applause, when it 
comes, is a feeble affair, more chilling almost than 
silence. In some fashionable towns it is bad form to 
applaud at all in the afternoon. I have a vivid recol- 
lection of the effect produced one afternoon in Chelt- 
enham by the vigorous applause of a sympathizing 
friend of mine, sitting in the reserved seats. How all 
the other reserved seats craned their necks in credulous 
astonishment to get a view of this innovator, this outer 
barbarian ! He was new to the wondrous ways of the 
Chillitonians. In the same audience was a lady, Irish 
and very charming, as I found out on later acquaint- 
ance, who showed her appreciation from time to time 
by clapping the tips of her fingers together noiselessly, 
while her glance said : " I should very much like to 
applaud, but you know I can't do it ; we are in Chelt- 
enham, and such a thing is bad form, especially in the 
afternoon." 

Afternoon audiences in the southern health resorts 
of England are probably the least inspiriting and in- 
spiring of all. There are the sick, the lame, the halt. 
Some of them are very interesting people, but a large 
proportion appear to be suffering more from the bore- 
dom of life than any other complaint, and look as if 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



253 



it would do them good to follow out the well-known 
advice, " Live on sixpence a day, and earn it." It is 
hard work entertaining people who have done every- 
thing, seen everything, tasted everything, been every- 




THE GOUTY MAN. 



where — people whose sole aim is to kill time. A fair 
sprinkling are gouty. They spend most of their wak- 
ing hours in a bath-chair. As a listener, the gouty 
man is sometimes decidedly funny. He gives signs of 



254 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

life from time to time by a vigorous slap on his thigh 
and a vicious looking kick. Before I began to know 
him, I used to wonder whether it was my discourse 
producing some effect upon him. 

I am not afraid of meeting these people in America. 
Few people are bored here, all are happy to live, and 
all work and are busy. American men die of brain 
fever, but seldom of the gout. If an American saw 
that he must spend his life wheeled in a bath-chair, he 
would reflect that rivers are numerous in America, and 
he would go and take a plunge into one of them. 




CHAPTER XXIX. 

Wanderings through New York — Lecture at 
THE Harmonie Club — Visit to the Century 
Club. 



Nezv York, March i. 

THE more I see New York, the more I like 
it. 

After lunch I had a drive through Central Park and 
Riverside Park, along the Hudson, and thoroughly 
enjoyed it. I returned to the Everett House through 
Fifth Avenue. I have never seen Central Park in 
summer, but I can realize how beautiful it must be 
when the trees are clothed. To have such a park in 
the heart of the city is perfectly marvelous. It is 
true that, with the exception of the superb Catholic 
Cathedral, Fifth Avenue has no monument worth 
mentioning, but the succession of stately mansions is 
a pleasant picture to the eye. What a pity this 
cathedral cannot stand in a square in front of some 
long thoroughfare, it would have a splendid effect. I 
know this was out of the question. Built as New 
York is, the cathedral could only take the place of a 
block. It simply represents so many numbers be- 
tween Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets on Fifth Avenue. 

In the Park I saw statues of Shakespeare, Walter 
Scott, and Robert Burns. I should have liked to see 



256 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

those of Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many 
other celebrities of the land. Washington, Franklin, 
and Lincoln are practically the only Americans whose 
statues you see all over the country. They play here 
the part that Wellington and Xelson play in England. 
After all, the " bosses" and the local politicians who 
run the towns probably never heard of Longfellow, 
Bryant, Poe, etc. 

At four o'clock, Mr. Thomas Nast, the celebrated 
caricaturist, called. I was delighted to make his 
acquaintance, and found him a most charming man. 

I dined with General Horace Porter and a few other 
friends at the Union League Club. The witty general 
was in his best vein. 

At eight o'clock I lectured at the Harmonie Club, 
and had a large and most appreciative audience, com- 
posed of the pick of the Israelite community in New 
York. 

After the lecture I attended one of the " Saturdays " 
at the Century Club, and met Mr. Kendal, who, with 
his talented wife, is having a triumphant progress 
through the United States. 

There is no gathering in the world where you can 
see so many beautiful, intelligent faces as at the Cen- 
tury Club. There you see gathered together the 
cleverest men of a nation whose chief characteristic 
is cleverness. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

Visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music — 
Rev. Dr. Talmage. 



Neiu York, March 2. 

WENT to hear Dr. T. de Witt Talmage this morn- 
ing at the Academy of Music, Brooklyn. 

What an actor America has lost by Dr. Talmage 
choosing the pulpit in preference to the stage ! 

The Academy of Music was crowded. Standing- 
room only. For an old-fashioned European, to see a 
theater, with its boxes, stalls, galleries, open for divine 
service was a strange sight; but we had not gone very 
far into the service before it became plain to me that 
there was nothing divine about it. The crowd had 
come there, not to worship God, but to hear Mr. Tal- 
mage. 

At the door the programme was distributed. It con- 
sisted of six hymns to be interluded with prayers by 
the doctor. Between the fifth and sixth, he delivered 
the lecture, or the sermon, if you insist on the name, 
and during the sixth there was the collection, that 
hinge on which the whole service turns in Protestant 
places of worship. 

I took a seat and awaited with the rest the entrance 
of Dr. Talmage. There was subdued conversation go- 



258 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



ing on all Jaround, just as there would be at a theater 
or concert : in fact, throughout the whole of the pro- 
ceedings, there was no sign of a silent lifting up of the 

spirit in worship. 
Not a person in that 
strange congregation, 
went on his or her 
knees to pray. Most 
of them put one hand 
in front of the face, 
and this was as near 
as they got that morn- 
ing to an attitude of 
devotion. Except for 
this, and the fact that 
they did not applaud, 
there was absolutely 
no difference between 
them and any other 
theater audience I 
K ever saw. 

The monotonous 
hymns were accom- 
panied by a cornet-a- 
piston, which lent a 
certain amount of life to them, but very little 
religious harmony. That cornet was the key-note 
of the whole performance. The hymns, composed, 
I believe, for Dr. Talmage's flock, are not of 
high literary value. " General " Booth would 
probably hesitate to include such in the repertoire 
of the Salvation Army. Judge of them for your- 




THE LEADER OF THE CHOIR. 



A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 259 

self. Here are three illustrations culled from the 
programme : 

Sing, O sing, ye heirs of glory I 
Shout your triumphs as you go : 
Zion's gates will open for you, 
You shall find an entrance through. 

'Tis the promise of God, full salvation to give 
Unto him who on Jesus, his Son, will believe. 

Though the pathway be lonely, and dangerous too, {sic) 
Surely Jesus is able to carry me thro'. 

This is poetry such as you find inside Christmas 
crackers. 

Another hymn began : 

One more day's work for Jesus, 
One less of life for me ! 

I could not help thinking that there would be good 
employment for a prophet of God, with a stout whip, 
in the congregations of the so-called faithful of to-day. 
I have heard them by hundreds shouting at the top of 
their voices : 

Paradise, O Paradise ! 
'Tis weary waiting here ; 

1 long to be where Jesus is. 
To feel, to see him near. 

O Paradise, O Paradise ! 

I greatly long to see 
The special place my dearest Lord, 

In love, prepares for me I 

Knowing something of those people outside the 
church doors, I have often thought what an edifying 
sight it would be if the Lord deigned to listen and 



26o A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

take a few of them at their word. If the fearless 
Christ were here on earth again, what crowds of cheats 
and humbugs he would drive out of the Temple ! And 
foremost, I fancy, would go the people who, instead of 
thanking their Maker who allows the blessed sun to 
shine, the birds to sing, and the flowers to grow for 
them here, howl and whine lies about longing for the 
joy of moving on to the better world, to the " special 
place " that is prepared for them. If there be a better 
world, it will be too good for hypocrites. 

After hymn the fifth, Dr. Talmage takes the floor. 
The audience settled in their seats in evident anticipa- 
tion of a good time, and it was soon clear to me that 
the discourse was not to be dull at any rate. But I 
waited in vain for a great thought, a lofty idea, or re- 
fined language. There came none. Nothing but com- 
monplaces given out with tricks of voice and the ges- 
tures of a consummate actor. The modulations of the 
voice have been studied with care, no single platform 
trick was missing. 

The doctor comes on the stage, which is about forty 
feet wide. He begins slowly. The flow of language 
is great, and he is never at a loss for a word. Motion- 
less, in his lowest tones, he puts a question to us. 
Nobody replies, of course. Thereupon he paces wildly 
up and down the whole length of the stage. Then, 
bringing up in full view of his auditors, he stares at 
them, crosses his arms, gives a double and tremendous 
stamp on the boards, and in a terrific voice he repeats 
the question, and answers it. The desired effect is 
produced : he never misses fire. 

Being an old stager of several years' standing mj-- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 26 1 

self, I admire him professionally. Nobody is edified, 
nobody is regenerated, nobody is improved, but all are 
entertained. It is not a divine service, but it is a 
clever performance, and the Americans never fail to 
patronize a clever performance. All styles go down 
with them. They will give a hearing to everybody 




THE DESIRED EFFECT. 

but the bore, especially on Sundays, when other forms 
of entertainment are out of the running. 

It is not only the Brooklyn public that are treated 
to the discourses of Dr. Talmage, but the whole of 
America. He syndicates his sermons, and they are 
published in Monday's newspapers in all quarters of 
America. I have also seen them reproduced in the 
Australian papers. 

The delivery of these orations by Dr. Talmage is so 
superior to the matter they are made of, that to read 
them is slow indeed compared to hearing them. 



262 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

At the back of the programme was a flaring adver- 
tisement of Dr. Talmage's paper, called : 

CHRISTIAN HERALD AND SIGNS OF OUR TIMES. 

A live, undenominational, illustrated Christian paper, with a 
weekly circulation of fifty thousand copies, and rapidly increasing. 
Every State of the Union, every Province of Canada, and every 
country in the world is represented on its enormous subscription 
list. Address your subscription to Mr. N., treasurer, etc, 

"Signs of our times," indeed ! 




CHAPTER XXXI. 



Virginia— The Hotels— The South— I will Kill 
A Railway Conductor before I leave America 
— Philadelphia — Impressions of the Old City. 




K 



Petersburg, Va., March 3. 

LEFT New York last night 
-rf and arrived here at 
noon. No change 
in the 
^=-- scenery. 
The same burnt-up fields, 
the same placards all over 
the land. The roofs of 
houses, the trees in the for- 
ests, the fences in the fields, all 
announce to the world the magic 
properties of castor oil, aperients, 
and liver pills. 

A little village inn in the bot- 
tom of old Brittany is a palace of 
comfort compared to the best 
hotel of a Virginia town. I feel 
wretched. My bedroom is so 
dirty that I shall not dare to 
I have just had lunch : a piece 
of tough dried-up beef, custard pie, and a glass of 

263 



MY SUPPER. 

undress to-night 



264 J FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

filthy water, the whole served by an old negro on an 
old, ragged, dirty table-cloth, 

Petersburg, which awakes so many souvenirs of the 
War of Secession, is a pretty town scattered with 
beautiful villas. It strikes one as a provincial town. 
To me, coming from the busy North, it looks asleep. 
The South has not yet recovered from its disasters of 
thirty years ago. That is what struck me most, when, 
two years ago, I went through Virginia, Carolina, and 
Georgia. 

Now and then American eccentricity reveals itself. 
I have just seen a church built on the model of a Greek 
temple, and surmounted with a pointed spire lately 
added. Just imagine to yourself Julius Caesar with 
his toga and buskin on, and having a chimney-top hat 
on his head. 

The streets seemed deserted, dead. 

To my surprise, the Opera House was crowded to- 
night. The audience was fashionable and appreciative, 
but very cool, almost as cool as in Connecticut and 
Maine. 

Heaven be praised I a gentleman invited me to have 
supper at a club after the lecture. 

March 4. 
I am sore all over. I spent the night on the bed, 
outside, in my day clothes, and am bruised all over. I 
have pains in my gums too. Oh, that piece of beef 
yesterday! lam off to Philadelphia. My bill at the 
hotel amounts to $1.50. Never did I pay so much 
through the nose for what I had through the mouth. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



.65 



Philadelphia, March 4. 

Before I return to Europe I will kill a railway con- 
ductor. 

From Petersburg to Richmond I was the only occu- 
pant of the parlor car. It was bitterly cold. The 




"imagine JULIUS C^SAR WITH A BIG HAT.'" 



conductor of the train came in the smoke-room, and 
took a seat. I suppose it was his right, although I 
doubt it, for he was not the conductor attached to the 



266 A FRENCHMAN- IN AMERICA. 

parlor car. He opened the window. The cold, icy air 
fell on my legs, or (to use a more proper expression, as I 
am writing in Philadelphia) on my lower limbs. I said 
nothing, but rose and closed the window. The fellow 
frowned, rose, and opened the window again. 

" Excuse me," I said ; " I thought that perhaps you 
had come here to look after my comfort. If you 
have not I will look after it myself." And I rose and 
closed the window. 

" I want the window open," said the conductor, and 
he prepared to re-open it, giving me a mute, impudent 
scowl. 

I was fairly roused. Nature has gifted me with a 
biceps and a grip of remarkable power. I seized the 
man by the collar of his coat. 

"As true as I am alive," I exclaimed, "if you open 
this window, I will pitch you out of it." And I pre- 
pared for war. The cur sneaked away and made an 
exit compared to which a whipped hound's would be 
majestic. 

I am at the Bellevue, a delightful hotel. My friend 
Wilson Barrett is here, and I have come to spend the 
day with him. He is playing every night to crowded 
houses, and after each performance he has to make a 
speech. This is his third visit to Philadelphia. Dur- 
ing the first visit, he tells me that the audience wanted 
a speech after each act. 

It is always interesting to compare notes with a 
friend who has been over the same ground as yourself. 
So I was eager to hear Mr. Wilson Barrett's impres- 
sions of his long tour in the States. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



267 



Several points we both agreed perfectly upon at 
once; the charming geniality and good-fellowship of 
the best Americans, the brilliancy and naturalness of 
the ladies, the wonderful intelligence and activity of 
the people, and the wearing monotony of life on the 
road. 

After the scene in the train, I was interested, too, to 
find that the train conductors — those mute, magnificent 




THE WHIPPED CONDUCTOR. 



monarchs of the railroad — had awakened in Mr. Barrett 
much the same feeling as in myself. We Europeans 
are used to a form of obedience or, at least, deference 
from our paid servants, and the arrogant attitude of 
the American wage-earner first amazes, and then en- 
rages us — when we have not enough humor, or good- 
humor, to get some amusement out it. It is so novel 



268 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



to be tyrannized over by people whom you pay to 
attend to your comfort ! The American keeps his 
temper under the process, for he is the best-humored 
fellow in the world. Besides, a small squabble is no 
more in his line than a small anything else. It is not 








worth his while. The Westerner may pull out a pistol 
and shoot you if you annoy him, but neither he nor 
the Eastern man will wrangle for mastery. 

If such was not the case, do you believe for a mo- 
ment that the Americans would submit to the rule of 
the " Rings," the " Leaders," and the " Bosses"? 



I like Philadelphia, with its magnificent park, its 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



269 



beautiful houses that look like homes. It is not brand 
new, like the rest of America. 

My friend, Mr. J. M. Stoddart, editor of Lippin- 
cotfs Magazine, has kindly chaperoned me all the day. 

I visited in detail the State House, Independence 
Square. These words evoke sentiments of patriotism 
in the hearts of the Americans. Here was the bell 
that " proclaimed liberty throughout the Colonies " so 
loudly that it split. It was on the 8th of July, 1776, 
that the bell was rung, as the public reading of the 
Declaration of Independence took place in the State 
House on that day, 
and there were great 
rejoicings. John 
Adams, writing to 
Samuel Chase on the 
9th of July, said : 
" The bell rang all 
day, and almost all 
night." 

It is recorded by 
one writer that, on 
the 4th of July, when 
the motion to adopt 
the declaration 
passed the majority 
of the Assembly, al- 
though not signed 
by all the delegates, the old bell-ringer awaited anxious, 
ly, with trembling hope, the signing. He kept saying : 
"They'll never do it, they'll never do it!" but his 
eyes expanded, and his grasp grew firm when the voice 




THE OLD LIBERTY BELL. 



270 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



of a blue-eyed youth reached his ears in shouts of tri- 
umph as he flew up the stairs of the tower, shouting: 
" Ring, grandpa, ring ; they've signed ! " 

What a day this old " Liberty Bell " reminds you 
of! 

There, in the Independence Hall, the delegates were 
gathered. Benjamin Harrison, the ancestor of the 
present occupier of the White House, seized John 
Hancock, upon whose head a price was set, in his arms, 
and placing him in the presidential chair, said : " We 
will show Mother Britain how little we care for her, by 
making our president a Massachusetts man, whom she 
has excluded from pardon by public proclamation," 
and, says Mr. Chauncey M. Depew in one of his beauti- 
ful orations, when they were signing the Declaration, 
and the slender Elbridge Gerry uttered the grim pleas- 
antry, " We must hang together, or surely we will hang 
separately," the portly Harrison responded with more 
daring humor, " It will be all over with me in a mo- 
ment, but you will be 
kicking in the air half 
an hour after I am 
gone." 

The National Mu- 
^, seum is the auxiliary 
^T chamber to Independ- 
ence Hall, and there 
you find many most 
THE INKSTAND. interesting relics of Co- 

lonial and Revolution- 
ary days : the silver inkstand used in signing the 
famous Declaration ; Hancock's chair; the little table 




A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 271 

upon which the document was signed, and hundreds 
of souvenirs piously preserved by generations of 
grateful Americans. 

It is said that Philadelphia has produced only two 
successful men, Mr. Wanamaker, the great dry-goods- 
store man, now a member of President Benjamin Har- 
rison's Cabinet, and Mr. George W. Childs, proprietor 
of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, one of the most im- 
portant and successful newspapers in the United States. 

I went to Mr. Wanamaker's dry-goods-store, an es- 
tablishment strongly reminding you of the Paris Bo7i 
Marc]u\ or Mr. Whiteley's warehouses in London. 

By far the most interesting visit was that which I 
paid to Mr. George W. Childs in his study at the Public 
Ledger s ofifices. It would require a whole volume to 
describe in detail all the treasures that Mr. Childs has 
accumulated: curios of all kinds, rare books, manu- 
scripts and autographs, portraits, china, relics from the 
celebrities of the world, etc. Mr. Childs, like the 
Prussians during their unwelcome visit to France in 
1870, has a strong penchant for clocks. Indeed his col- 
lection is the most remarkable in existence. His study 
is a beautiful sanctum sanctorum ; it is also a museum 
that not only the richest lover of art would be proud to 
possess, but that any nation would be too glad to ac- 
quire, if it could be acquired ; but Mr. Childs is a very 
wealthy man, and he means to keep it, and, I under- 
stand, to hand it over to his successor in the owner- 
ship of the Public Ledger. 

Mr. George W. Childs is a man of about fifty years 
of age, short and plump, with a most kind and amiable 



272 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



face. His munificence and philanthropy are well 
known and, as I understand his character, I believe he 
would not think much of my gratitude to him for the 
kindness he showed me if I dwelt on them in these 
pages. 

Thanks to my kind friends, every minute has been 
occupied visiting some interesting place, or meeting 
some interesting people. I shall lecture here next 




WHEN IRELAND IS FREE. 



month, and shall look forward to the pleasure of being 
in Philadelphia again. 

At the Union League Club I met Mr. Rufus E. 
Shapley, who kindly gave me a copy of his clever and 
witty political satire, "Solid for Mulhooly," illustrated 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 273 

by Mr. Thomas Nast. I should advise any one who 
would understand how Jonathan is ruled municipally, 
to peruse this little book. It gives the history of 
Pat's rise from the Irish cabin in Connaught to the 
City Hall of the large American cities. 

" When one man," says Mr. Shapley, " owns and dom- 
inates four wards or counties, he becomes a leader. 
Half a dozen such leaders combined constitute what is 
called a Ring. When one leader is powerful enough 
to bring three or four such leaders under his yoke, 
he becomes a Boss ; and a Boss wields a power almost 
as absolute, while it lasts, as that of the Czar of Rus- 
sia or the King of Zululand." 

Extracts from this book would not do it justice. It 
should be read in its entirety. I read it with all the 
more pleasure that, in ''Jonathan and His Continent," 
I ventured to say : " The English are always wonder- 
ing why Americans all seem to be in favor of Home 
Rule, and ready to back up the cause with their dollars. 
Why ? I will tell you. Because they are in hopes 
that, when the Irish recover the possession of Ireland, 
they will all go home." 

A foreigner who criticises a nation is happy to see 
his opinions shared by the natives. 




CHAPTER XXXII. 

My Ideas of the State of Texas— Why I will 
NOT Go there— The Story of a Frontier Man. 



New York, March 5. 

HAVE had cold audiences in Maine and Connecti- 
cut ; and indifferent ones in several cities, 
while I have been warmly received in many others. 
It seems that, if I went to Texas, I might get it 
hot. 

I have received to-day a Texas paper containing a 
short editorial marked at the four corners in blue pen- 
cil. Impossible not to see it. The editorial abuses 
me from the first line to the last. When there appears 
in a paper an article, or even only a short paragraph' 
abusing you, you never run the risk of not seeing it. 
There always is, somewhere, a kind friend who will 
post it to you. He thinks you may be getting a little 
conceited, and he forwards the article to you, that you 
may use it as wholesome physic. It does him good, 
and does you no harm. 

The article in question begins by charging me with 
having turned America and the Americans into ridicule, 
goes on wondering that the Americans can receive me 
so well everywhere, and, after pitching into me right 
and left, winds up by warning me that, if I should go 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



275 



to Texas, I might for a change meet with a hot re- 
ception. 

A shot, perhaps. 

A shot in Texas! No, no, no. 

I won't go to Texas. I should strongly object 
to being shot anywhere, but especially in Texas; 




"A SHOT IN TEXAS." 

where the event would attract so little public 
attention. 



Yet, I should have liked to go to Texas, for was it 
not from that State that, after the publication of 
"Jonathan and His Continent," I received the two 
following letters, which I have kept among my treas- 
ures ? 



276 ,/ FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

Dear Sir : 

I have read your book on America and greatly enjoyed it. 
Please to send me your autograph. 1 enclose a ten-cent piece. 
The postage will cost you five cents. Don't trouble about the 
change. 

My Dear Sir : 

I have an album containing the photographs of many well- 
known people from Europe as well as from America. I should 
much like to add yours to the number. If you will send it to me, I 
will send you mine and that of my wife in return. 

And I also imagine that there must be in Texas a 
delightful primitiveness of manners and good-fellow- 
ship. 

A friend once related to me the following remi- 
niscence : 

I arrived one evening in a little Texas town, and asked for a 
bedroom at the hotel. 

There was no bedroom to be had, but only a bed in a double- 
bedded room. 

" Will that suit you } " said the clerk. 

" Well. I don't know," I said hesitatingly. " Who is th6 
other ? " 

" Oh, that's all right," said the clerk, " you may set your mind at 
rest on that subject." 

" Very well," I replied, " I will take that bed." 

At about ten o'clock, as I was preparing to go to bed, my bed- 
room companion entered. It was a frontier man in full uniform: 
Buffalo Bill hat, leather leggings, a belt accommodating a couple 
of revolvers — no baggage of any kind. 

I did not like it. 

" Hallo, stranger," said the man, " how are you ? " 

" I'm pretty well." I replied, without meaning a word of it. 

The frontier man undressed, that is to say, took off his boots, 
placed the two revolvers under his pillows and lay down. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



277 



I liked it less and less. 

By and by, we both went to sleep. In the morning we woke up 
at the same time. He rose, dressed — that is to say, put on his 
boots, and wished me good-morning. 




MY ROOMMATE. 



The hall porter came with letters for my companion, but none 
for me. I thought I should like to let that man know I had no 
money with me. So I said to him ; 



278 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" I am very much disappointed, I expected some money from 
New York, and it has not come." 

" I hope it will come," he replied. 

I did not like that hope. 

In the evening, we met again. He undressed — you know, went 
to sleep, rose early in the morning, dressed — you know. 

The porter came again with letters for him and none for me. 

" Well, your money has not come," he said. 

" I see it has not. I'm afraid I'm going to be in a fix what to 
do." 

" I'm going away this morning." 

" Are you ? " I said. " I'm sorry to part with you." 

The frontier man took a little piece of paper and wrote some- 
thing on it. 

" Take this, my friend," he said ; " it may be useful to you." 

It was a check for a hundred dollars. 

I could have gone down on my knees, as I refused the check 
and asked that man's pardon. 

I lectured in Brooklyn to-night, and am of? to the 
West to-morrow morning. 




CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Cincinnati — The Town— The Suburbs— A Ger- 
man City — " Over the Rhine " — What is a 
Good Patriot? — An Impressive Funeral — A 
Great Fire — How It Appeared to Me, and 
How It Appeared to the Newspaper Re- 
porters. 



Cincinnati, March 7. 

MY arrival in Cincinnati this morning was any- 
thing but triumphal. 
On leaving the car, I gave my check to a cab-driver, 
who soon came to inform me that my valise was 
broken. It was a leather one, and on being thrown 
from the baggage-van on the platform, it burst open, 
and all my things were scattered about. In England 
or in France, half a dozen porters would have im- 
mediately come to the rescue, but here the porter 
is practically unknown. Three or four men belonging 
to the company gathered round, but, neither out 
of complaisance nor in the hope of gain, did any of 
them offer his services. They looked on, laughed, and 
enjoyed the scene. I daresay the betting was brisk as 
to whether, I should succeed in putting my things 
together or not. Thanks to a leather strap I had in 
my bag, I managed to bind the portmanteau and have 
it placed on the cab that drove to the Burnet House. 



28o 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



Immediately after registering my name, I went to 
buy an American trunk, that is to say, an iron-bound 
trunk, to place my things in safety. I have been told 
that trunk makers give a commission to the railway 
and transfer baggagemen who, having broken trunks, 
recommend their owners to go to such and such a 



'^Sfei'H 




MY BROKEN V'ALISE. 



place to buy new ones. This goes a long way toward 
explaining the way in which baggage is treated in 
America. 

On arriving in the dining-room, I was surprised to 
see the glasses of all the guests filled with lemonade, 
" Why," thought I, " here is actually an hotel which 
is not like all the other hotels." The lemonade turned 
out to be water from the Ohio River. I could not help 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 281 

feeling grateful for a change ; any change, even that 
of the color of water. Anybody who has traveled 
a great deal in America will appreciate the 
remark. 

Cincinnati is built at the bottom of a funnel from 
which rise hundreds of chimneys vomiting fire and 
smoke. From the neighboring heights, the city looks 
like a huge furnace, and so it is, a furnace of industry 
and activity. It reminded me of Glasgow. 

If the city itself is anything but attractive, the resi- 
dential parts are perfectly lovely. I have seen nothing 
in America that surpasses Burnet Wood, situated on 
the bordering heights of the town, scattered with 
beautiful villas, and itself a mixture of a wilderness 
and a lovely park. A kind friend drove me for three 
hours through the entire neighborhood, giving me, in 
American 'fashion, the history of the owner of each 
residence we passed. Here was the house of Mr. A., 
or rather Mr. A. B. C, every American having three 
names. He came to the city twenty years ago with- 
out a dollar. Five years later he had five millions. 
He speculated and lost all, went to Chicago and made 
millions, which he afterward lost. Now again he has 
several millions, and so on. This is common enough in 
America. By and by, we passed the most beautiful of 
all the villas of Burnet Wood — the house of the Oil 
King, Mr. Alexander Macdonald, one of those won- 
derfully successful men, such as Scotland alone can 
boast all the world over. America has been a great 
field for the display of Scotch intelligence and in- 
dustry. 

After visiting the pretty museum at Eden Park, a 



282 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

museum organized in 1880 in consequence of Mr. 
Charles W. West's offer to give $150,000 for that pur- 
pose, and already in possession of very good works of 
art and many valuable treasures, we returned to the 
city and stopped at the Public Library. Over 200,000 
volumes, representing all the branches of science and 
literature, are there, as well as a collection of all the 
newspapers of the world, placed in chronological order 
on the shelves and neatly bound. I believe that this 
collection of newspapers and that of Washington are 
the two best known. In the public reading-room, 
hundreds of people are running over the newspapers 
from Europe and all the principal cities of the United 
States. My best thanks are due to Mr. Whelpley, the 
librarian, for his kindness in conducting me all over 
this interesting place. Upstairs I was shown the 
room where the members of the Council of Education 
hold their sittings. The room was all topsy-turvey. 
Twenty-six desks and twenty-six chairs was about all 
the furniture of the room. In a corner, piled up to- 
gether, were the cuspidores. I counted. Twenty-six. 
Right. 

After thanking my kind pilot, I returned to the 
Burnet House to read the evening papers. I read that 
the next day I was to breakfast with Mr. A., lunch 
with Mr. B., and dine with Mr. C. The menu was not 
published. I take it for granted that this piece of 
intelligence is quite interesting to the readers of Cin- 
cinnati. 

My evening being free, I looked at the column of 
amusements. The first did not tempt me, it was 
this : 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



283 



THE KING OF THE SWAMPS. 

The Only and the Original. 

English Jack. 

the incomprehensible frog man. 

He makes a frog pond of his stomach by eating Hving frogs. An 

appetite created by life in the swamps. He is so fond of this sort 




"the king of the swamps. 



of food that he takes the pretty creatures by the hind legs, and be- 
fore they can say their prayers they are inside out of the cold. 

The next advertisement was that of a variety show, 
that most stupid form of entertainment so popular in 
America ; the next was the announcement of pugilists, 
and another one that of a " most sensational drama, in 
which ' one of the most emotional actresses' in 
America " was to appear, supported by " one of the 
most powerful casts ever gathered together in the 
world." 



284 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

The superlatives, in American advertisements, have 
long ceased to have the slightest effect upon me. 

The advertisement of another " show " ran thus: I 
beg to reproduce it in its entirety ; indeed it would be 
a sacrilege to meddle with it. 

TO THE PUBLIC. 

My Friends and Former Patrons: I have now been before 
the public for the past seventeen years, and am perhaps too well 
known to require further evidence of my character and integrity 
than my past life and record will show. Fifteen years ago I in- 
augurated the system of dispensing presents to the public, believ- 
ing that a fair share of my profits could thus honestly be returned 
to my patrons. At the outset, and ever since, it has been my aim 
to deal honestly toward the multitude who have given me patron- 
age. Since that time many imitators have undertaken to beguile 
the public, with but varying success. Many unprincipled rascals 
have also appeared upon the scene, men without talent, but far- 
reaching talons, who by specious promises have sought to swindle 
all whom they could inveigle. This class of scoundrels do not hesi- 
tate to make promises that they cannot and never intend to fulfill, 
and should be frowned down by all honest men. They deceive the 
public, leave a bad impression, and thus injure legitimate exhibi- 
tions. Every promise I make will be faithfully fulfilled, as ex- 
perience has clearly proven that dealing uprightly with the public 
brings its sure reward. All who visit my beautiful entertainment 
may rely upon the same fair dealing which has been my life-long 
policy, and which has always honored me with crowded houses. 

NEW UNIQUE PASTIMES. NEW HARMLESS MIRTH. 

NEW COSTLY WONDERS. NEW FAMOUS ARTISTS. 

NEW PLEASANT STUDIES. NEW INNOCENT FUN. 

NEW POPULAR MUSIC. NEW KNOWLEDGE. 

Special Notice. 
Ladies and Children are especially Invited to Attend this Enter- 
tainment. We Guarantee it to be Chaste, Pure, and as Whole- 
some and Innocent as it is Amusing and Laughable. 



A FRENCH AI A N^ IN AMERICA. 



285 



Finally I decided on going to see a German tragedy. 
I did not understand it, but the acting seemed to me 
good. 

Like Milwaukee, Cincinnati possesses a very strong 
German element. Indeed a whole part of the city is 




A GERMAN TRAGEDY. 



entirely inhabited by a German population, and situated 
on one side of the water. When you cross the bridge 
in its direction, you are going " over the Rhine," to 
use the local expression. " To go over the Rhine " of 
an evening means to go to one of the many German 



286 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

Braiierei, and have sausages and Bavarian beer for 
supper. 

The town is a very prosperous one. The Germans 
in America are liked for their steadiness and industry. 
An American friend even told me' that the Germans 
were perhaps the best patriots the United States could 
boast of. 

Patriots ! The word sounded strangely to my ears. 
I may be prejudiced, but I call a good patriot a man 
who loves his own mother country. You may like the 
land of your adoption, but you love the land of your 
birth. Good patriots ! I call a good brother a man 
who loves his sister, not other people's sisters. 

The Germans apply for their naturalization papers 
the day after they have landed. I should admire their 
patriotism much more if they waited a little longer be- 
fore they changed their own mother for a step-mother. 

March 8. 

I witnessed a most impressive ceremony this morn- 
ing, the funeral of the American Minister Plenipoten- 
tiary to the Court of Berlin, whose body was brought 
from Germany to his native place a few days ago. No 
soldiers ordered to accompany the cortege, no uniforms, 
but thousands of people voluntarily doing honor to 
the remains of a talented and respected fellow-citizen 
and townsman : a truly republican ceremony in its sim- 
plicity and earnestness. 

The coffin was taken to the Music Hall, a new and 
beautiful building capable of accommodating thou- 
sands of people, and placed on the platform amid ever- 
greens and the Stars and Stripes. In a few minutes. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 287 

the hall, decorated with taste but with, appropnate 
simplicity, was packed from floor to ceiling. Some 
notables and friends of the late Minister sat on the 
platform around the cofifin, and the mayor, in the name 
of the inhabitants of the city, delivered a speech, a 
eulogistic funeral oration, on the deceased diplomatist. 
All parties were represented in the hall, Republicans 
and Democrats alike had come. America admits no 
party feeling, no recollection of political differences, to 
intrude upon the homage she gratefully renders to the 
memory of her illustrious dead. 

The mayor's speech, listened to by the crowd in re- 
spectful silence, was much like all the speeches deliv- 
ered on such occasions, including the indispensable 
sentence that " he knew he could safely afifirm that the 
deceased had never made any enemies." When I hear 
a man spoken of, after his death, as never having 
made any enemies, as a Christian I admire him, but I 
also come to the conclusion that he must have been a 
very insignificant member of the community. But the 
phrase, I should remember, is a mere piece of flattery 
to the dead, in a country where death puts a stop to 
all enmity, political enmity especially. The same 
would be done in England, and almost everywhere. 
Not in France, however, where the dead continue to 
have implacable enemies for many years after they have 
left the lists. 

The afternoon was pleasantly spent visiting the 
town hall and the remarkable china manufactories, 
which turn out very pretty, quaint, and artistic pot- 
tery. The evening brought to the Od^on a fashion- 



2S8 A FRENCHMAX IX AMERICA. 

able* and most cultivated audience. I am invited to 
pay a return visit to this city. I shall look forward to 
the pleasure of lecturing here again in April. 

March 9. 

Spent a most agreeable Sunday in the hospitable 
house of M. Fredin, the French consular agent, and 
his amiable and talented wife. M. Fredin was kind 
enough to call yesterday at the Burnet House. 

As a rule, I never call on the representatives of 
France in my travels abroad. If I traveled as a tour- 
ist, I would ; but traveling as a lecturer, I should be 
afraid lest the object of my visits might be miscon- 
strued, and taken as a gentle hint to patronize me. 

One day I had a good laugh with a French consul, 
in an English town where I came to lecture. On ar- 
riving at the hall I found a letter from this diplomatic 
compatriot, in which he expressed his surprise that I 
l^ad not apprised him of my arrival. The next morn- 
ing, before leaving the town, I called on him. He 
welcomed me most gracefully. 

" Why did you not let me, your consul, know that 
you were coming? " he said to me. 

" Well, Monsieur le Consul," I replied, *' suppose I 
wrote to you : ' Monsieur le Consul, I shall arrive at 
N. on Friday,' and suppose, now, just suppose, that 
you answered me, ' Sir, I am glad to hear you will 
arrive here on Friday, but what on earth is that to 
me ? ' " 

He saw the point at once. A Frenchman always 
does. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



289 



March 10. 

I like this land of conjuring. This morning I took 
the street car to go on the Burnet Hills. At the foot 
of the hill the car — horses, and all — enters a little house. 
The house climbs the hill vertically by means of cables. 
Arrived at the top of the mountain, the car comes out 
of the little house and goes on its way, just as if abso- 
lutely nothing had happened. To return to town, I 
went down the hill in 

the^same fashion. , IH^ Hi-S-^^i 

But if the cable should 
break, you will ex- 
claim, where would 
you be ? Ah, there 
you are ! It does 
not break. It did 
once, so now they see 
that it does not again. 

In the evening 
there was nothing to 
see except variety 
shows and wrestlers. 
There was a variety 
show which tempted 
me, the Hermann's Vaudevilles. I saw on the 
list of attractions the name of my friend and com- 
patriot, F. Trewey, the famous shadowgraphist, 
and I concluded that if the other artistes were as 
good in their lines as he is in his, it would be well 
worth seeing. The show was very good of its kind, 
and Trewey was admirable ; but the audience were 
not refined, and it was not his most subtle and artis- 




A VARIETY ACTOR. 



290 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

tic tricks that they applauded most, but the broader 
and more striking ones. After the show he and I 
went "over the Rhine." You know what it means. 



March 11, g a. m. 

For a long time I had wished to see the wonderful 
American fire brigades at work. The wish has now 
been satisfied. 

At half-past one this morning I was roused in my 
bed by the galloping of horses and the shouts of people 
in the street. Huge tongues of fire were licking my 
window, and the heat in the room was intense. In- 
deed, all around me seemed to be in a blaze, and I 
took it for granted that the Burnet House was on fire. 
I rose and dressed quickly, put together the few val- 
uables that were in my possession, and prepared to 
make for the street. I soon saw, however, that it 
was a block of houses opposite that was on fire, or 
rather the corner house of that block. 

The guests of the hotel were in the corridors ready 
for any emergency. Had there been any wind in our 
direction, the hotel was doomed. The night was calm 
and wet. As soon as we became aware that no lives 
were lost or in danger in the burning building, and 
that it would only be a question of insurance money 
to be paid by some companies, we betook ourselves to 
admire the magnificent sight. For it was a magnifi- 
cent sight, this whole large building, the prey of 
flames coming in torrents out of every window, the 
dogged perseverance of the firemen streaming floods 
of water over the roof and through the windows, the 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



291 



salvage corps men penetrating through the flames 
into the building in the hope of receiving the next day 
a commission on all the goods and valuables saved. 
A fierce battle it was between a brute element and 
man. By three o'clock the element was conquered, 




A FIRE YARN. 



but only the four walls of the building remained, which 
proved to me that, with all their wonderful promp- 
titude and gallantry, all firemen can do when flames 
have got firm hold on a building is to save the adjoin- 
ing property. 

I listened to the different groups of people in the 



292 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



hotel. Some gave advice as to how the firemen should 
set about their work, or criticised. Others related the 
big fires they had witnessed, a few indulging in the 




AS WE SAW IT. 



recital of the exploits they performed thereat. There 
are a good many Gascons among the Americans. At 
four o'clock all danger was over, and we all retired. 



I was longing to read the descriptions of the fire in 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



293 



this morning's papers. I have now read them and am 
not at all disappointed. On the contrary, they are 




AS THE REPORTERS SAW IT. 



beyond my most sanguine expectations. Wonderful ; 
simply perfectly wonderful ! I am now trying to 
persuade myself that I really saw all that the reporters 



294 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



saw, and that I really ran great danger last night. 
For, " at every turn," it appears, " the noble hotel 
seemed as if it must become the prey of the fierce 
element, and could only be saved by a miracle." 




THE FIREMAN. 



Columns and columns of details most graphically 
given, sensational, blood-curdling. But all that is 
nothing. You should read about the panic, and the 
scenes of wild confusion in the Burnet House, when 
all the good folks, who had all dressed and were look- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 295 

ing quietly at the fire from the windows, are described 
as a crowd of people in despair: women disheveled, in 
their night-dresses, running wild, and throwing them- 
selves in the arms of men to seek protection, and all 
shrieking and panic-stricken. Such a scene of con- 
fusion and terror you can hardly imagine. Wonder- 
ful ! 




CHAPTER XXXIV. 

A Journey if you Like — Terrible Encounter 
WITH AN American Interviewer. 



In the traiji to Briishville, March 1 1 . 

LEFT Cincinnati this morning at ten o'clock and 
■^ shall not arrive at Brushville before seven o'clock 
to-night. I am beginning to learn how to speak 
American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at 
the railroad ofifice, the clerk said to me: 

" C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P. ? " 

" C. H. D.," I replied, with perfect assurance. 

I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville. 

By this time I know pretty well all those combina- 
tions of the alphabet by which the different railroad 
lines of America are designated. 

No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall 
have to change trains three times, but none of them, I 
am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or dining cars. 
There is something democratic about uniform cars for 
all alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weak- 
ness for the parlor cars — and the dining cars. 

At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, 
two years ago, counted six wooden huts. To-day it 
has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric light in 
the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, 

2g6 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



297 



two banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, 
toothpicks, and all the signs of American civilization. 

I changed trains at one o'clock at Castle Green 
Junction. No hotel in the place. I inquired where 
food could be obtained. A little wooden hut, on the 
other side of the depot, bearing the inscription 
" Lunch Room," was pointed out to me. LtmcJi in 
America has not the meaning that it has in England, 
as I often experienced to my despair. The English 
are solid people. In England lunch means something. 
In America, it does not. However, as there was no 
Beware written outside, I entered the place. Several 
people were eat- ..„,^^^ 

mg pies, fruit "'* '" '- 

pies, pies with 
crust under, and 
crust over: 
sealed mys- 
teries. 

"I want some- 
thing to eat," 
I said to a man 
behind the 
counter, who 
was in posses- 
sion of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland. 

"What 'd ye loike ? " replied he, winking with the 
eye that was not there. 

" Well, what have j^ou got ? " 

" Peach poy, apricot poy, apple poy, and mince 

poy." 

" Is that all ? " 




"PEACH POY AND APPLE POY." 



298 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" And, shure, what more do you want ? " 

I have always suspected something mysterious about 
mince pies. At home, I eat mince pies. I also 
trust my friends' cooks. Outside, I pass. I think 
that mince pies and sausages should be made at home. 

" I like a little variety," I said to the Irishman, 
" give me a small slice of apple pie, one of apricot pie, 
and another of peach pie." 

The Irishman stared at me. 

"What's the matter with the mince poy?" he 
seemed to say. 

I could see from his eye that he resented the insult 
offered to his mince pies. 

I ate my pies and returned on the platform. I was 
told that the train was two hours behind time, and I 
should be too late to catch the last Brushville train at 
the next change. 

I walked and smoked. 

The three pies began to get acquainted with each 
other. 

Brushville, March 12. 

Oh, those pies ! 

At the last change yesterday, I arrived too late. 
The last Brushville train was gone. 

The pies were there. 

A fortune I would have given for a dinner and a bed, 
which now seemed more problematic than ever. 

I went to the station-master. 

" Can I have a special train to take me to Brushville 
to-night?" 

"A hundred dollars." 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



299 



" How much for a locomotive alone ? " 

" Sixty dollars." 

" Have you a freight train going to Brushville ? " 

" What will you do with it ? " 

" Board it." 

"Board it ! I can't stop the train." 

" I'll take my chance." 

" Your life is insured ? " 

"Yes; for a great deal more than it is worth." 

" Very well," he said, " I'll let you do it for five 
dollars." 

And he looked as if he was going to enjoy the fun. 
The freight train arrived, slackened speed, and I 
boarded, with my port- 
manteau and my um- 
brella, a car loaded 
with timber. I placed 
my handbag on the 
timber — you know, 
the one I had when 
traveling in "the 
neighborhood of Chi- 
cago " — sat on it, 
opened my umbrella, 
and waved a " tata " 
to the station-master. 

It was raining fast, 
and I had a journey of some thirty miles to make 
at the rate of about twelve miles an hour. 

Oh, those pies ! They now seemed to have resolved 
to fight it out. Sacrebleu! De bleu! de bleu! 

A few miles from Brushville I had to get out, or 




ON THE ROAD TO BRUSHVILLE. 



300 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

rather, get down, and take a ticket for Brushville on 
board a local train. 

Benumbed with cold, wet through, and famished, I 
arrived here at ten o'clock last night. The peach pie, 
the apple pie, and the apricot pie had settled their dif- 
ferences and become on friendly and accommodating 
terms. 

I was able, on arriving at the hotel, to enjoy some 
light refreshments, which I only obtained, at that time 
of night, thanks to the manager, whom I had the pleas- 
ure of knowing personally. 

At eleven o'clock I went to bed, or, to use a more 
proper expression for my Philadelphia readers, I 
retired. 

I had been " retiring" for about half an hour, when 
I heard a knock at the door. 

" Who's there ? " I grumbled from under the bed- 
clothes. 

"A representative of the V>Y\is\\v\\\t Exp7'ess." 

" Oh," said I, " I am very sorry — but I'm asleep." 

"Please let me in; I won't detain .}'Ou very long." 

" I guess you won't. Now, please do not insist. I 
am tired, upset, ill, and I want rest. Come to-morrow 
morning." 

" No, I can't do that," answered the voice behind 
the door; "my paper appears in the morning, and I 
want to put in something about you." 

" Now, do go away," I pleaded, " there's a good 
fellow." 

" I must see you," insisted the voice. 

" You go ! " I cried* "you go " without men- 
tioning any place. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



301 



For a couple of minutes there was silence, and I 
thought the interviewer was gone. The illusion was 
sweet, but short. There was another knock, followed 
by a "I really must see you to-night." Seeing that 
there would be no peace until I had let the reporter 




THE INTERVIEWER. 

in, I unbolted the door, and jumped back into my — 
you know. 

It was pitch dark. 

The door opened, and I heard the interviewer's steps 
in the room. By and by, the sound of a pocket being 
searched was distinct. It was his own. A match was 
pulled out and struck; the premises examined and 
reconnoitered. 

A chandelier with three lights hung in the middle of 
the room. The reporter, speechless and solemn, 
lighted one burner, then two, then three, chose the 



302 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

most comfortable seat, and installed himself in it, 
looking at me with an air of triumph. 

I was sitting up, wild and desheveled, in my " retir- 
ing" clothes. 

^^ Que voiilez-vous ? " I wanted to yell, my state 
of drowsiness allowing me to think only in French. 

Instead of translating this query by "What do you 
want?" as I should have done, if I had been in the 
complete enjoyment of my intellectual faculties, I 
shouted to him : 

"What will you have?" 

"Oh, thanks, I'm not particular," he calmly replied* 
" I'll have a little whisky and soda — rye whisky, 
please." 

My face must have been a study as I rang for 
whisky and soda. 

The mixture was brought — for two. 

"I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?" 
coolly said the man in the room. 

" Not at all," I remarked ; " this is perfectly lovely ; 
I enjoy it all." 

He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed 
his legs, and having drawn a long whiff from his cigar, 
he said : 

" I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brush- 
ville ; may I ask you what you have come here for?" 

" Now," said I, " what the deuce is that to you ? If 
this is the kind of questions you have to ask me, you 
go " 

He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed : 

" How are you struck with Brushville ? " 

" I am struck," said I, " with the cheek of some of 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 303 

the inhabitants, I have driven to this hotel from 
the depot in a closed carriage, and I have seen nothing 
of your city." 

The man wrote down something. 

"I lecture to-morrow night," I continued, "before 
the students of the State University, and I have come 
here for rest." 

He took this down. 

" All this, you see, is very uninteresting ; so, good- 
night." 

And I disappeared. . 

The interviewer rose and came to my side. 

" Really, now that I am here, you may as well let 
me have a chat with you." 

"You wretch! " I exclaimed. " Don't you see that 
I am dying for sleep? Is there nothing sacred for 
you? Have you lost all sense of charity? Have you 
no mother ? Don't you believe in future punishment ? 
Are you a man or a demon ? " 

" Tell me some anecdotes, some of your reminiscen- 
ces of the road," said the man, with a sardonic grin. 

I made no reply. The imperturbable reporter re- 
sumed his seat and smoked. 

" Are you gone ? " I sighed, from under the 
blankets. 

The answer came in the following words : 

" I understand, sir, that when you were a young 
man " 

"When I was WHAT?" I shouted, sitting up once 
more. 

" I understand, sir, that when you were quite a 
young man," repeated the interviewer, with the sen- 



304 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

tence improved, "you were an officer in the French 
army." 

" I was," I murmured, in the same position. 

" I also understand you fought during the Franco- 
Prussian war." 

"I did," I said, resuming a horizontal position. 

" May I ask you to give me some reminiscences of 
the Franco-Prussian war — just enough to fill about a 
column ? " 

I rose and again sat up. 

" Free citizen of the great American Republic, 
said I, " beware, beware ! There will be blood shed 
in this room to-night." 

And I seized my pillow. 

" You are not meaty," exclaimed the reporter. 

" May I inquire what the meaning of this strange 
expression is?" I said, frowning; "I don't speak 
American fluently." 

" It means," he replied, " that there is very little to 
be got out of you." 

"Are you going?" I said, smiling. 

" Well, I guess I am." 

" Good-night." 

" Good-night." 

I bolted the door, turned out the gas, and " re- 
retired." 

" Poor fellow," I thought ; " perhaps he relied on me 
to supply him with material for a column. I might 
have chatted with him. After all, these reporters 
have invariably been kind to me. I might as well 
have obliged him. What is he going to do?" 

And I dreamed that he was dismissed. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 305 

I ought to have known better. 

This morning I opened the Brushville Express, and, 
to my stupefaction, saw a column about me. My 
impressions of Brushville, that I had no opportunity 
of looking at, were there. Nay, more. I would blush 
to record here the exploits I performed during the 
Franco-Prussian war, as related by my interviewer, 
especially those which took place at the battle of 
Gravelotte, where, unfortunately, I was not present. 
The whole thing was well written. The reference to 
my military services began thus: " Last night a hero 
of the great Franco-Prussian war slept under the hos- 
pitable roof of Morrison Hotel, in this city." 

" Slept ! " This was adding insult to injury. 

This morning I had the visit of two more reporters. 

"What do you think of Brushville?" they said; 
and, seeing that I would not answer the question, they 
volunteered information on Brushville, and talked 
loud on the subject. I have no doubt that the after- 
noon papers will publish my impressions of Brushville. 




CHAPTER XXXV. 

The University of Indiana — Indianapolis — The 
Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic 
ON THE Spree— A Marvelous Equilibrist. 



Bloomington, Ind., March 13. 

LECTURED yesterday before the students of the 
-^ University of Indiana, and visited the different 
buildings this morning. The university is situated on 
a hill in the midst of a wood, about half a mile from 
the little town of Bloomington. 

In a few days I shall be at Ann Arbor, the Univer- 
sity of Michigan, the largest in America, I am told. I 
will wait till then to jot down my impressions of uni- 
versity life in this country. 

I read in the papers : " Prince Saunders, colored, 
was hanged here (Plaquemine, Fla.) yesterday. He 
declared he had made his peace with God, and his 
sins had been forgiven. Saunders murdered Rhody 
Walker, his sweetheart, last December, a few hours 
after he had witnessed the execution of Carter Wil- 
kinson." 

If Saunders has made his peace with God, I hope 
his executioners have made theirs with God and man. 
What an indictment against man ! What an argument 

306 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 307 

against capital punishment ! Here is a man commit- 
ting a murder on returning from witnessing an execu- 
tion. And tliere are men still to be found who declare 
that capital punishment deters men from committing 
murder ! 

hidianapolis, March 14. 
Arrived here yesterday afternoon. Met James Whit- 
comb Riley, the Hoosier poet. Mr. Riley is a man of 
about thirty, a genuine poet, full of pathos and humor, 




VETERANS. 



and a great reciter. No one, I imagine, could give his 
poetry as he does himself. He is a born actor, who 
holds you in suspense, and makes you cry or laugh 
just as he pleases. I remember, when two years ago 
Mr. Augustin Daly gave a farewell supper to Mr. Henry 



3o8 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



Irving and Miss Ellen Terry at Delmonico's, Mr. Riley 
recited one of his poems at table. He gave most of us 
a big lump in our throats, and Miss Terry had tears 
rolling down her cheeks. 



The veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic 
are having a great field dr^y in Indianapolis. They 




A GREAT BALANCING KEAI', 



have come here to attend meetings and ask for pen- 
sions, so as to reduce that unmanageable surplus. In- 
dianapolis is full, and the management of Denison 
House does not know which way to turn. All these 
veterans have large, broad-brimmed soft hats and are 
covered all over with badges and ribbons. Their wives 
and daughters, members of some patriotic association, 
have come with them. It is a huge picnic. The en- 
trance hall is crowded all day. The spittoons have 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



309 



been replaced by tubs for the occasion. Chewing is in 
favor all over America, but the State of Indiana beats, 
in that way, everything I have seen before. 

Went to see Clara Morris in Adolphe Belot's "Ar- 
ticle 47," at the Opera House, last night. Clara Morris 




" IN EUROPE SWAGGERING LITTLE BOYS SMOKE." 



is a powerful actress, but, like most actors and actresses 
who go "starring" through America, badly supported. 
I watched the audience with great interest. Nineteen 
mouths out of twenty were chewing — the men tobacco, 



3IO A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

the women gum impregnated with peppermint. All 
the jaws were going like those of so many ruminants 
grazing in a field. From the box I occupied the sight 
was most amusing. 

On returning to Denison House from the theater, I 
went to have a smoke in a quiet corner of the hall, far 
from the crowd. By and by two men, most smartly 
dressed, with diamond pins in their cravats, and flowers 
embroidered on their waistcoats, came and sat opposite 
me. I thought they had chosen the place to have a 
quiet chat-together. Not so. One pushed a cuspidore 
with his foot and brought it between the two chairs. 
There, for half an hour, without saying one word to 
each other, they chewed, hawked, and spat — and had 
a good time before going to bed. 

Trewey is nowhere as an equilibrist, compared to a 
gallant veteran who breakfasted at my table this morn- 
ing. Among the different courses brought to him 
were two boiled eggs, almost raw, poured into a tum- 
bler according to the American fashion. Without 
spilling a drop, he managed to eat those eggs with the 
end of his knife. It was marvelous. I have never 
seen the like of it, even in Germany, where the knife 
trick is practiced from the tenderest age. 

In Europe, swaggering little boys smoke; here they 
chew and spit, and look at you, as if to say: "See 
what a big man I am ! " 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Chicago (Second Visit) — Vassili Vereschagin's 
Exhibition — The " Angelus " — Wagner and 
Wagnerites — Wanderings About the Big 
City — I Sit on the Tribunal. 



Chicago, March 15. 
ARRIVED here this morning and put up at the 
xJL Grand Pacific Hotel. My lecture to-night at the 
Central Music Hall is advertised as a causerie. My 
local manager informs me that many people have in- 
quired at the box-office what the meaning of that 
French word is. As he does not know himself, he 
could not enlighten them, but he thinks that curiosity 
will draw a good crowd to-night. 

This puts me in mind of a little incident which took 
place about a year ago. I was to make my appearance 
before an afternoon audience in the fashionable town 
of Eastbourne. Not wishing to convey the idea of a 
serious and prosy discourse, I advised my manager to 
call the entertainment ^^ A causerie^ The room was 
full and the affair passed off very well. But an old 
lady, who was a well-known patroness of such enter- 
tainments, did not put in an appearance. On being 
asked the next day why she was not present, she 
replied : "Well, to tell you the truth, when I saw that 
they had given the entertainment a French name, I 

311 



312 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

was afraid it might be something not quite fit for me 
to hear." Dear soul ! 

March i6. 
My manager's predictions were realized last night. 
I had a large audience, one of the keenest and the most 
responsive and appreciative I have ever had. I was 
introduced by Judge Elliott Anthony, of the Superior 
Court, in a short, witty, and graceful little speech. He 
spoke of Lafayette and of the debt of gratitude America 
owes to France for the help she received at her hands 
during the War of Independence. Before taking leave 
of me, Judge Anthony kindly invited me to pay a 
visit to the Superior Court next Wednesday. 

March 17. 
Dined yesterday with Mr. James W. Scott, pro- 
prietor of the Chicago Herald, one of the most flourish- 
ing newspapers in the United States, and in the evening 
went to see Richard Mansfield in " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde." The play is a repulsive one, but the double 
impersonation gives the great actor a magnificent 
opportunity for the display of his histrionic powers. 
The house was crowded, though it was Sunday. The 
pick of Chicago society was not there, of course. Some 
years ago, I was told, a Sunday audience was mainly 
composed of men. To-day the women go as freely as 
the men. The " horrible " always has a great fascina- 
tion for the masses, and Mansfield held his popular 
audience in a state of breathless suspense. There was 
a great deal of disappointment written on the faces 
when the light was turned down on the appearance of 




\ ><v. 



"dear soul ! " 



314 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" Mr. Hyde," with his horribly distorted features. A 
woman, sitting in a box next to the one I occupied, 
exclaimed, as " Hyde " came to explain his terrible 
secret to the doctor, in the fourth Set, "What a shame, 
they are turning down the light again ! " 

March i8. 
Spent yesterday in recreation intellectual — and 
otherwise. I like to see everything, and I have no 
objection to entering a dime museum. I went to one 
yesterday morning, and saw a bearded lady, a calf with 
two heads, a gorilla (stuffed), a girl with no arms, and 
other freaks of nature. The bearded lady had very, 
very masculine features, but Jioni soit q7ii vial y pcnse. 
I could not help thinking of one of Qeneral Horace 
Porter's good stories. A school-master asks a little 
boy what his father is. 

"Please, sir, papa told me not to tell." 
" Oh, never mind, it's all right with me." 
" Please, sir, he is the bearded lady at the dime 
museum." 

From the museum I went to the free library in the 
City Hall. Dime museums and free libraries — such is 
America. The attendance at the free libraries increases 
rapidly every day, and the till at the dime museums 
diminishes with proportionate rapidity. 

After lunch I paid a visit to the exhibition of Vassili 
Vereschagin's pictures. What on earth could possess 
the talented Russian artist, whose coloring is so lovely, 
to expend his labor on such subjects ! Pictures like 
those, which show the horrors of a campaign in all 
their hideousness, may serve a good purpose in creat- 



A FRENCHMAN- IN AMERICA. 



315 



ing a detestation of war in all who see them. Nothing 
short of such a motive in the artist could excuse the 
portrayal of such infamies. These pictures are so 
many nightmares which will certainly haunt my eyes 
and brain for days and nights to come. Battle scenes 
portrayed with a real- 
ism that is revolting, 
because, alas, only too 
true. The execution 
of nihilists in* a dim, 
dreary, snow-covered 
waste. An execution 
of sepoys, the doomed 
rebels tied to the 
mouths of cannon 
about to be fired off. 
Scenes of torture, il- 
lustrative of the ex- 
tent to which human 
suffering can be car- 
ried, give you cold 
shudders in every fiber 
of your body. One 
horrid canvas shows 
a deserted battlefield, 
the snow-covered 

ground littered with corpses that ravens are tear- 
ing and fighting for. But, perhaps worst of all, is a 
picture of a field, where, in the snow, lie the human 
remains of a company of Russian soldiers who have 
been surprised and slain b}^ Turks. Among the bodies, 
outraged by horrible and nameless mutilations, walks 




THE bp:arded lady." 



3i6 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

a priest, swinging a censer. One seems to be pursued 
by, and impregnated with, a smell of cadaverous putre- 
faction. This collection of pictures is installed in a 
place which has been used for stabling horses in, and is 
reeking with stable odors and the carbolic acid that 
has been employed to neutralize them. Your sense of 
smell is in full sympathy with your horrified sense of 
sight : both are revolted. 

Now, behind the three large rooms devoted to the 
Russian artist's works was a small one, in which hung a 
single picture. You little guess that that picture was 
no other than Jean Francois Millet's "Angelus." 
Millet's dear little " Angelus," that hymn of resigna- 
tion and peace, alongside of all this roar and carnage 
of battle! The exhibitor thought, perhaps, that a 
sedative might be needed after the strong dose of 
Vassili Vereschagin, but I imagine that no one who 
went into that little room after the others was in a 
mood to listen to Millet's message. 

March 19. 
Yesterday morning I went to see the Richmond 
Libby Prison, a four-story, huge brick building which 
has been removed here from Richmond, over a dis- 
tance of more than a thousand miles, across the moun- 
tains of Pennsylvania. This is, perhaps, as the cir- 
cular says, an unparalleled feat in the history of the 
world. The prison has been converted into a museum, 
illustrating the Civil War and African Slavery in Amer- 
ica. The visit proved very interesting. In the after- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 317 

noon I had a drive through the beautiful parks of the 
city. 

In the evening I went to see " Tannhauser " at the 
Auditorium. Outside, the building looks more like a 
penitentiary than a place of amusement — a huge pile 
of masonry, built of great, rough, black-looking blocks 
of stone. Inside, it is magnificent. I do riot know 
anything to compare with it for comfort, grandeur, and 
beauty. It can hold seven thousand people. The 
decorations are white and gold. The lighting is done 
by means of arc electric lights in the enormously lofty 
roof — lights which can be lowered at will. Mr. Peck 
kindly took me to see the inner workings of the stage, 
I should say " stages," for there are three. The hy- 
draulic machinery for raising and lowering them cost 
$200,000. 

Madame Lehmann sang grandly. I imagine that 
she is the finest lady exponent of Wagner's music alive. 
She not only sings the parts, but looks them. Built 
on grand lines and crowned with masses of blond 
hair, she seems, when she gives forth those volumes of 
clear tones, a Norse goddess strayed into the nine- 
teenth century. 

M. Gounod describes Wagner as an astounding 
prodigy, an aberration of genius, a dreamer haunted 
by the colossal. For years I had listened to Wagner's 
music, and, like most of my compatriots, brought up 
on the tuneful airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, 
Auber, etc., I entirely failed to appreciate the music of 
the future. All I could say in its favor was some vari- 
ation of the sentiment once expressed by Mr. Edgar 
W. Nye (" Bill Nye ") who, after giving the subject 



3l8 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA, 

his mature consideration, said he came to the conclu- 
sion that Wagner's music was not so bad as it sounded. 
But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and heard 
and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to 
see that they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful. 

Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealiza- 
tion of speech. 

The fault that I, like many others, have fallen into, 
was that of listening to the voices instead of listening 
to the orchestra. The fact is, the voices could almost 
be dispensed with altogether. The orchestra gives 
you the beautiful poem in music, and the personages on 
the stage are really little more than illustrative pup- 
pets. They play about the same part in the work that 
pictures play in a book. Wagner's method was some- 
thing so new, so different to all we had been accus- 
tomed to, that it naturally provoked much indignation 
and enmity — not because it was bad, but because it 
was new. It was the old story of the Classicists and 
Romanticists over again. 

If you wanted to write a symphony, illustrative of 
the pangs and miseries of a sufTerer from toothache, 
you would, if you were a disciple of Wagner, write 
your orchestral score so that the instruments should 
convey to the listener the whole gamut of groans — the 
temporary relief, the return of the pain, the sudden 
disappearance of it on ringing the bell at the dentist's 
door, the final wrench of extraction gone through by 
the poor patient. On the boards you would put a 
personage who, with voice and contortions, should 
help )'ou, as pictorial illustrations help an author. 
Such is the Wagnerian method. 



A FkEKCttMAN m AMERICA. 



319 



After the play I met a terrible Wagnerite. Most 
Wagnerites are terrible. They will not admit that 
anything can be discussed, much less criticised, in the 
works of the master. They are not admirers, disciples; 
they are worshipers. To them Wagner's music is as 
perfect as America is to many a good-humored Ameri- 




A TERRIBLE WAGNERITE. 



can. They will tell you that never have horses neighed 
so realistically as they do in the " Walkiire." Answer 
that this is almost lowering music to the level of 
ventriloquism, and they will declare you a profane, un- 
worthy to live. My Wagnerite friend told me last night 
that Wagner's work constantly improved till it reached 
perfection in "' Parsifal." " There," he said, quite seri- 
ously, " the music has reached such a state of perfection 



320 A FRENCHMAN IM AMERICA. 

that, in the garden scene, you can smell the violets 
and the roses." 

"Well," I interrupted, "I heard 'Parsifal' in Bay- 
reuth, and I must confess that it is, perhaps, the only 
work of Wagner's that I cannot understand." 

" I have heard it thirty-four times," he said, " and 
enjoyed it more the thirty-fourth time than I did the 
thirty-third." 

"Then," I remarked, "perhaps it has to be heard 
fifty times before it can be thoroughly appreciated. 
In which case, you must own that life is too short to 
enable one to see an opera fifty times in order to enjoy 
it as it should really be enjoyed. I don't care what 
science there is about music, or what labors a musician 
should have to go through. As one of the public, I say 
that music is a recreation, and should be understood at 
once. Auber, for example, with his delightful airs, 
that three generations of men have sung on their way 
home from the opera house, has been a greater bene- 
factor of the human race than Wagner. I prefer 
music written for the heart to music written for the 
mind." 

On hearing me mention Auber's name in one breath 
with Wagner's, the Wagnerite threw a glance of con- 
tempt at me that I shall never forget. 

" Well," said I, to regain his good graces, " I may 
improve yet — I will try again." 

As a rule, the Wagnerite is a man utterly destitute 
of humor. 

March 20. 
Yesterday morning I called on Judge Elliott An- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



321 



thony, at the Superior Court. The Judge invited me 
to sit by his side on the tribunal, and kindly explained 
to me the procedure, as the cases went on. Certainly 
kindness is not rare in Europe, but such simplicity in 
a high official is only to be met with in America. 




^^ 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Ann Arbor — The University of Michigan— De- 
troit Again — The French Out of France— 
Oberlin College, Ohio — Black and White — 
Are All American Citizens Equal? 



Detroit, March 22. 

ONE of the most interesting and brilliant audiences 
that I have yet addressed was the large one 
which gathered in the lecture hall of the University of 
Michigan, at Ann Arbor, last night. Two thousand 
young, bright faces to gaze at from the platform is a 
sight not to be easily forgotten, I succeeded in pleas- 
ing them, and they simply delighted me. 

The University of Michigan is, I think, the largest 
in the United States. 

Picture to yourself one thousand young men and 
one thousand young women, in their early twenties, 
staying together in the same boarding-houses, studying 
literature, science, and the fine arts in the same class- 
rooms, living happily and in perfect harmony. 

They are not married. 

No restraint of any sort. Even in the boarding- 
houses they are allowed to meet in the sitting-rooms ; 
I believe that the only restriction is that, at eight 
o'clock in the evening, or at nine (I forget which), the 
young ladies have to retire to their private apartments. 

322 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 323 

" But," some European will exclaim, ** do the young 
ladies' parents trust all these young men?" They do 
much better than that, my dear friend — they trust their 
daughters. • 

During eighteen years, I was told, three accidents 
happened, but three marriages happily resulted. 

The educational system of America engenders the 
high morality which undoubtedly exists throughout 
the whole of the United States, by accustoming women 
to the companionship of men from their infancy, first 
in the public schools, then in the high schools, and 
finally in the universities. It explains the social life of 
the country. It accounts for the delightful manner in 
which men treat women. It explains the influence of 
women. Receiving exactly the same education as the 
men, the women are enabled to enjoy all the intellec- 
tual pleasures of life. They are not inferior beings 
intended for mere housekeepers, but women destined 
to play an important part in all the stations of life. 

No praise can be too high for a system of education 
that places knowledge of the highest order at the dis- 
posal of every child born in America. The public 
schools are free, the high schools are free, and the 
universities,* through the aid that they receive from 
the United States and from the State in which they 
are, can offer their privileges, without charge for tui- 
tion, to all persons of either sex who are qualified by 
knowledge for admission. 

The University of Michigan comprises the Depart- 
ment of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the Depart- 

* A fee of ten dollars entitles a student to the privileges of per- 
manent membership in the University. 



324 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

ment of Medicine and Surgery, the Department of 
Law, the School of Pharmacy, the Homoeopathic 
Medical College, and the College of Dental Surgery. 
Each department has its special Faculty of Instruc- 
tion. 

I count Ii8 professors on the staff of the different 
faculties. 

The library contains 70,041 volumes, 14,626 unbound 
brochures, and 514 maps and charts. 

The University also possesses beautiful laboratories, 
museums, an astronomical observatory, collections, 
workshops of all sorts, a lecture hall capable of accom- 
modating over two thousand people, art studios, etc., 
etc. Almost every school has a building of its own, 
so that the University is like a little busy town. 

No visit that I have ever paid to a public institution 
interested me so much as the short one paid to the 
University of Michigan yesterday. 

Dined this evening with Mr. W. H. Brearley, editor 
of the Detroit Journal. Mr. Brearley thinks that the 
Americans, who received from France such a beautiful 
present as the statue of " Liberty Enlightening the 
World," ought to present the mother country of General 
Lafayette with a token of her gratitude and affection, 
and he has started a national subscription to carry out 
his idea. He has already received support, moral and 
substantial. I can assure him that nothing would 
touch the hearts of the French people more than such 
a tribute of gratitude and friendship from the other 
great republic. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 325 

In the evening I had a crowded house in the large 
lecture hall of the Young Men's Christian Associ- 
ation. 

After the lecture, I met an interesting Frenchman 
residing in Detroit. 

" I was told a month ago, when I paid my first visit to 
Detroit, that there were twenty-five thousand French 
people living here," I said to him. 

"The number is exaggerated, I believe," he replied, 
" but certainly we are about twenty thousand." 

" I suppose you have French societies, a French 
Club?" I ventured. 

He smiled. 

"The Germans have," he said, "but we have not. 
We have tried many times to found French clubs in 
this city, so as to establish friendly intercourse among 
our compatriots, but we have always failed." 

" How is that ? " I asked. 

"Well, I don't know. They all wanted to be presi- 
dents, or vice-presidents. They quarreled among 
themselves." 

" When six Frenchmen meet to start a society," I 
said, " one will be president, two vice-presidents, one 
secretary, and the other assistant-secretary. If the 
sixth cannot obtain an ofificial position, he will resign 
and go about abusing the other five." 

" That's just what happened." 

It was my turn to smile. Why should the French 
in Detroit be different from the French all over the 
world, except perhaps in their own country? A 
Frenchman out of France is like a fish out of water. 
He loses his native amiability and becomes a sort of 



326 



A FREXCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



suspicious person, who spends his life in thinking that 
everybody wants to tread on his corns. 

" When two Frenchmen meet in a foreign land," 
goes an old saying, " there is one too many." 

In Chicago there are two Frenchmen engaged in 
teaching the natives of the city "how to speak and 




THE TWO FRENCHMEN. 



write the French language correctly." The people of 
Chicago maintain that the streets are too narrow to 
let these two Frenchmen pass, when they walk in op- 
posite directions. And it appears that one of them 
has lately started a little French paper — to abuse the 
other in. ♦ 

I think that all the faults and weaknesses of the 
French can be accounted for by the presence of a 



A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 327 

defect, jealousy; and the absence of a quality, 
humor. 

Oberlin, O., March 24. 

Have to-night given a lecture to the students of 
Oberlin College, a religious institution founded by the 
late Rev. Charles Finney, the friend of the slaves, and 
whose voice, they say, when he preached, shook the 
earth. 

The college is open to colored students ; but in an 
audience of about a thousand young men and women, 
I could only discover the presence of two descendants 
of Ham. 

Originally many colored students attended at Ober- 
lin College, but the number steadily decreased every 
year, and to-day there are only very few. The colored 
student is not officially " boycotted," but he has prob- 
ably discovered by this time that he is not wanted in 
Oberlin College any more than in the orchestra stalls 
of an American theater. 

The Declaration of Independence proclaims that 
"all men are created equal," but I never met a man in 
America (much less still a woman) who believed this 
or who acted upon it. 

The railroad companies have special cars for colored 
people, and the saloons special bars. At Detroit, 1 
was told yesterday that a respectable and wealthy 
mulatto resident, who had been refused service in one 
of the leading restaurants of the town, brought an 
action against the proprietor,«but that, although there 
was no dispute of the facts, the jury unanimously de- 
cided against the plaintiff, who was moreover mulcted 



328 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



in costs to a heavy amount. But all this is nothing : 
the Young. Men's Christian Association, one of the 
most representative and influential corporations in the 




K 



THE NEGRO. 



United States, refuses to admit colored youths to 
membership. 

It is just possible that in a few years colored stu- 
dents will have ceased to study at Oberlin College. 

I can perfectly well understand that Jonathan 
should not care to associate too closely with the col- 
ored people, for, althougli they do not inspire me with 
repulsion, still I cannot imagine — well, I cannot under- 
stand for one thing how the mulatto can exist. 

But since the American has to live alongside the 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 329 

negro, would it not be worth his while to treat him 
politely and honestly, give him his due as an equal, if 
not in his eyes, at any rate in the eyes of the law ? 
Would it not be worth his while to remember that the 
"darky" cannot be gradually disposed of like the 
Indian, for Sambo adapts himself to his surroundings, 
multiplies apace, goes to school, and knows how to 
read, write, and reckon. Reckon especially. 

It might be well to remember, too, that all the great- 
est, bloodiest revolutions the world has ever seen were 
set on foot, not to pay off hardships, but as revenge 
for injustice. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was called a ro- 
mance, nothing but a romance, by the aristocratic 
Southerners; but, to use the Carlylian phrase, their 
skins went to bind the hundreds of editions of that 
book. Another " Uncle Tom's Cabin " may yet ap- 
pear. 

America will have " to work her thinking machine " 
seriously on this subject, and that before many years 
are over. If the next Presidential election is not run 
on the negro question, the succeeding one surely will 
be. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in New York — Joseph 
Jefferson — Julian Hawthorne — Miss Ada 
Rehan — "As You Like It" at Daly's 
Theater. 



New York, March 28. 

THE New York papers this morning announce that 
the " Society of Young Girls of Pure Character 
on the Stage" give a lunch to Mrs. Kendal to-morrow. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kendal have conquered America. 
Their tour is a triumphal march through the United 
States, a huge success artistically, financially, and 
socially. 

I am not surprised at it. I went to see them a 
few days ago in " The Ironmaster," and they de- 
lighted me. As Claire Mrs. Kendal was admirable. 
She almost succeeded in making me forget Madame 
Jane Hading, who created the part at the Gymnase, in 
Paris, six years ago. 

This morning Mr. Joseph Jefiferson called on me at 
the Everett House. The veteran actor, who looks 
more like a man of fifty than like one of over sixty, is 
now playing with Mr. William J. Florence in " The 
Rivals." I had never seen him off the stage. I im- 
mediately saw that the characteristics of the actor 
were the characteristics of the man — kindness, natural- 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 331 

ness, simplicity, bonhoviie, and finesse. An admirable 
actor, a great artist, and a lovable man. 

At the Down-Town Club, I lunched with the son of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne — the greatest novelist that 
America has yet produced — Mr. Julian Hawthorne, 
himself a novelist of repute. Lately he has written a 
series of sensational novels in collaboration with the 
famous New York detective. Inspector Byrnes. Mr. 
Julian Hawthorne is a man of about forty-five, tall, 
well-proportioned, with an artistic-looking head 
crowned with grayish hair, that reminds a Frenchman 
of Alexandre Dumas, yf/i-, and an American of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. A charming, unaffected man, and a de- 
lightful caiiseur. 

In the evening I went to Daly's Theater and saw 
" As You Like It." That bewitching queen of ac- 
tresses. Miss Ada Rehan, played Rosalind. Miss Rehan 
is so original that it would be perfectly impossible to 
compare her to any of the other great actresses of 
France and England. She is like nobody else. She 
is herself. The coaxing drawl of her musical voice, 
the vivacity of her movements, the whimsical spon- 
taneity that seems to direct her acting, her tall, hand- 
some figure, her beautiful, intellectual face, all tend to 
make her a unique actress. She fascinates you, and 
so gets hold of you, that when she is on the stage 
she entirely fills it. Mr. John Drew as Orlando and 
Mr. James Drew as ToiicJistone were admirable. 

It matters little what the play-bill announces at 
Daly's Theater. If I have not seen the play, I am 
sure to enjoy it ; if I have seen it already, I am sure 
to enjoy it again. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Washington-The City-Willard's Hotel~The 
Politicians-General Benjamin Harrison, U 
S. President — Washington Society— Balti- 
more— Philadelphia. 



Washington, April 3 
ARRIVED here the day before yesterday, and 
Jr\ put up at Willard's. I prefer this huge hotel to 
the other more modern houses of the capital, because 
It IS thoroughly American ; because it is in its rotunda 
that every evening the leading men of all parties and 
the notables of the nation may be found ; because to 
meet at Willard's at night is as much the regular thing 
as to perform any of the official functions of office 
dunng the day; because, to use the words of a guide 
which speaks the truth, it is pleasant to live in this his- 
torical place, in apartments where battles have been 
planned and political parties have been born or 
doomed to death, to become familiar with surround- 
ings amid which Presidents have drawn their most im- 
portant papers and have chosen their Cabinet Minis 
ters and where the proud beauties of a century have 
held their Court. 

On the subject of Washington hotels, I was told a 
good story the other day. 

332 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



ZZl 



The most fashionable hotel of this city having out- 
grown its space, the proprietors sent a note to a lady, 
whose back yard adjoined, to say, that, contemplating 
still enlarging their hotel, they would be glad to know 




EVENING AT WILLARD's. 



at what price she would sell her yard, and they would 
hand her the amount without any more discussion. 
The lady, in equally Yankee style, replied that she 
had been contemplating enlarging her back yard, and 



334 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

was going to inquire what they would take for part of 
their hotel ! 

How beautiful this city of Washington is, with its 
wide avenues, its parks, and its buildings! That Cap- 
itol, in white marble, standing on elevated ground, 
against a bright blue sky, is a poem — an epic poem. 

I am never tired of looking at the expanse of cloud- 
less blue that is almost constantly stretched overhead. 
The sunsets are glorious. The poorest existence would 
seem bearable under such skies. I am told they are 
better still further West. I fancy I should enjoy to 
spend some -time on a farm, deep in the country, far 
from the noisy, crowded streets, but I fear I am con- 
demned to see none but the busy haunts of Jonathan. 

In the evening I went to what is called a colored 
church. The place was packed with negroes of all 
shades and ages ; the women, some of them very 
smartly dressed, and waving scarlet fans. In a pew 
sat a trio truly gorgeous. Mother, in black shiny 
satin, light-brown velvet mantle covered with irides- 
cent beads, bonnet to match. Daughter of fifteen ; 
costume of sky-blue satin, plush mantle, scarlet red, 
chinchilla fur trimmings, white hat with feathers. 
Second girl, or daughter, light-blue velvet, from top 
to toe, with large hat, apple-green and gold. 

Every one was intently listening to the preacher, a 
colored man, who gave them, in graphic language and 
stentorian voice, the story of the capture of the Jews 
by Cyrus, their slavery and their delivery. A low ac- 
companiment of " Yes ! " " Hear, hear ! " " Allelujah ! " 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



335 



" Glory ! " from the hearers, showed their approbation 
of the discourse. From time to time, there would be 
a general chuckle or laughter, and exclamations of de- 
light from the happy grin-lit mouths, as, for instance, 
when the preacher described the supper of Belshazzar, 
and the appearance of the writing on the wall, in his 
own droll fashion. '"Let's have a fine supper,' said 
Belshazzar. * Dere's ole Cyrus out dere, but we'll 
have a good time and enjoy ourselves, and never mind 




v^^ 



A GORGEOUS TRIO, 



him.' So he went for de cups dat had come from de 
Temple of Jerusalem, and began carousin' ! Dere is 
Cyrus, all de while, marchin' his men up de bed ob de 
river. I see him comin' ! I see him ! " Then he pic- 
tured the state all that wicked party got in at the 
sight of the writing nobody could read, and by this 
time the excitement of the congregation was tremen- 
dous. The preacher thought this a good opportunity to 
point a moral. So he proceeded : " Now, drink is a 
poor thing ; dere's too much of it in dis here city." 
Here followed a picture of certain darkies, who cut a 



33^ A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

dash with shiny hats and canes, and frequented bars 
and saloons. " When folks take to drinkin', somefin's 
sure to go wrong." Grins and grunts of approbation 
culminated in perfect shouts of glee, as the preacher 
said : " Ole Belshazzar and de rest of 'em forgot to 
shut de city gate, and in came Cyrus and his men," 

They went nearly wild with pleasure over the story 
of the liberation of the Jews, and incidental remarks 




THE PREACHER. 



on their own freeing. " Oh, let dem go," said their 
masters, when they found the game was up, "dey'U 
soon perish and die out ! " Here the preacher laughed 
loudly, and then shouted : " But we don't die out so 
easy I " [Grins and chuckling.] 

One old negro was very funny to watch. When 
something met with his approval, he gave off a little 
♦* tchsu, tchsu ! " and writhed forward and back on his 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



337 



seat for a moment, apparently in intense enjoyment ; 
then jumped off his seat, turning round once or twice ; 
then he would listen 
intently again, as if 
afraid to lose a word. 

" I see dis, I see dat," 
said the preacher con- 
tinually. His listeners n '^''N!^\^\\\"^^'^<r^ ^*^ 
seemed to see it too. I \ ' ^^^^ \ 




At ten minutes to 
twelve yesterday morn- 
ing, I called at the 
White House. The 
President had left the 
library, but he was kind 
enough to return, and the old negro. 

at twelve I had the 

honor to spend a few minutes in the company of 
General Benjamin Harrison. Two years ago I was 
received by Mr, Grover Cleveland with the same 
courtesy and the same total absence of red tape. 

The President of the United States is a man about 
fifty-five years old; short, exceedingly neat, and even 
r^^/z^r^j^/ in his appearance. The hair and beard are 
white, the eyes small and very keen. The face is 
severe, but lights up with a most gentle and kind 
smile. 

General Harrison is a popular president ; but the 
souvenir of Mrs. Cleveland is still haunting the minds 
of the Washingtonians. They will never forget the 
most beautiful lady who ever did the honors of the 



33^ A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

White House, and most of them look forward to the 
possibiHty of her returning to Washington in March, 
1893. 

Washington society moves in circles and sets. The 
wife of the President and the wives and daughters of 
the Cabinet Ministers form the first set — Olympus, as 
it were. The second set is composed of the ladies 
belonging to the families of the Judges of the Supreme 
Court ! The Senators come next. The Army circle 
comes fourth. The House of Representatives supplies 
the last set. Each circle, a Washington friend tells me, 
is controlled by rigid laws of etiquette. Senators' wives 
consider themselves much superior to the wives of 
Congressmen, and the Judges' wives consider them- 
selves much above those of the Senators. But, as a 
rule, the great lion of Washington society is the British 
Minister, especially when he happens to be a real live 
English lord. All look up to him ; and if a young 
titled English attacJi^ wishes to marry the richest 
heiress of the capital, all he has to do is to throw the 
handkerchief, the young and the richest natives do not 
stand the ghost of a chance. 

Lectured last night, in the Congregational Church, 
to a large and most fashionable audience. Senator 
Hoar took the chair, and introduced me in a short, 
neat, gracefully worded little speech. In to-day's 
Washington Star, I find the following remark: 

The lecturer was handsomely introduced by Senator Hoar, who 
combines the dignity of an Englishman, the sturdiness of a Scotch- 
man, the savoir faire of a Frenchman, and the culture of a Bos- 
tonian. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 339 

What a strange mixture ! I am trying to find where 
the compliment comes in, surely not in " the savoir 
faire of a Frenchman ! " 

Armed with a kind letter of introduction to Miss Kate 
Field, I called this morning at the ofifice of this lady, 
who is characterized by a prominent journalist as " the 
very brainiest woman in the United States." Un- 
fortunately she was out of town. 

I should have liked to make the personal acquaint- 
ance of this brilliant, witty woman, who speaks, I am 
told, as she writes, in clear, caustic, fearless style. 
My intention was to interview her a bit. A telegram 
was sent to her in New York from her secretary, and 
her answer was wired immediately: " Interview himy 
So, instead of interviewing Miss Kate Field, I was in- 
terviewed, for her paper, by a young and very pretty 
lady journalist. 

Baltimore, April 4. 

I have spent the day here with some friends. 

Baltimore strikes one as a quiet, solid, somewhat 
provincial town. It is an eminently middle-class look- 
ing city. There is no great wealth in it, no great act- 
ivity ; but, on the other hand, there is little poverty ; 
it is a well-to-do c\\.y par excellence. The famous Johns 
Hopkins University is here, and I am not surprised to 
learn that Baltimore is a city of culture and refinement. 

A beautiful forest, a mixture of cultivated park and 
wilderness, about a mile from the town, must be a 
source of delight to the inhabitants in summer and dur- 
ing the beautiful months of September and October. 



34° 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



I was told several times that Baltimore was famous 
all over the States for its pretty women. 

They were not out to-day. And as I have not been 

invited to lecture in 
Baltimore, I must be 
content with hoping 
to be more lucky 
next time. 

Philadelphia, April ^. 

After my lecture 

in Association Hall 

to-night, I will return 

to New York to 

spend Easter Sunday 

IQ with my friends. 

Next Monday off 

again to the West, 

to Cincinnati again, to Chicago again, and as far as 

Madison, the State city of Wisconsin. 

By the time this tour is finished — in about three 
weeks — I shall have traveled something like thirty 
thousand miles. 

The more I think of it, the more I feel the truth of 
this statement, which I made in " Jonathan and His 
Continent " : To form an exact idea of what a lecture 
tour is in America, just imagine that you lecture to- 
night in London, to-morrow in Paris, then in Berlin, 
then in Vienna, then in Constantinople, then in Tehe- 
ran, then in Bombay, and so forth. With this difference, 
that if you had to undertake the work in Europe, at the 
end of a week you would be more dead than alive. 




A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



341 



But here you are not caged on the railroad lines, you 
can circulate. There is no fear of cold, no fear of hun- 
ger, and if the good, attentive, polite railway conduc- 




"the good, attentive, polite conductor 
of england." 



tors of England could be induced to do duty on board 
the American cars, I would anytime go to America for 
the mere pleasure of traveling. 



CHAPTER XL. 

Easter Sunday in New York. 



New York, April 6 [Easter Sunday.) 

THIS morning I went to Dr. Newton's church in 
Forty-eighth Street. He has the reputation of 
being one of the best preachers in New York, and the 

choir enjoys an equally 
great reputation. The 
church was literally 
packed until the ser- 
mon began, and then 
some of the strollers 
who had come to hear 
the anthems moved on. 
Dr. Newton's voice and 
delivery were not at all 
- to my taste, so I did 
not sit out his sermon 
either. He has a big, 
unctuous voice, with 
the intonations and in- 
, flections of a showman 
A BELLOWING SOPRANO. at thc fair. He has 

not the flow of ideas 
that struck me so forcibly when I heard the late 
Henry Ward Beecher in London ; he has not the 




A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



343 



histrionic powers of Dr. Talmage, either. There was 
more show than beauty about the music, too. A bel- 
lowing, shrieking soprano overpowered all the other 
voices in the choir, including that of a really beautiful 
tenor that deserved to be heard. 

New York blossoms like the rose on Easter Day. 
Every woman has a new bonnet and walks abroad to 
show it. 





r?'^^%. 




SOME EASTEH BONNETS. 



There are grades in millinery as there are in society. 
The imported bonnet takes the proudest rank ; it 
is the aristocrat in the world of headgear. It does 
not always come with the conqueror (in one of her 
numerous trunks), but it always comes to conquer, and 
a proud, though ephemeral triumph it enjoys, perched 
on the dainty head of a New York belle, and supple- 
mented by a frock from Felix's or Redfern's. 

It is a unique sight, Fifth Aveime on Easter Sunday, 



344 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



when all the up-tovvii churches have emptied them- 
selves of their gayly garbed worshipers. 

The " four hundred " have been keeping Lent in 
polite, if not rigorous, fashion. Who shall say what it 




KEEPING LENT. 



has cost them in self-sacrifice to limit themselves to the 
sober, modest violet for table and bonnet decoration 
during six whole - weeks ? These things cannot be 
lightly judged by the profane. I have even heard of 
sweet, devout New York girls who limited themselves 
to one pound of uiarrons glacds a week during Lent. 
Such feminine heroism deserves mention. 

And have they not been sewing flannel for the poor, 
once a week, instead of directing the manipulation of 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



345 



silk and gauze for their own fair forms, all the week 
long? Who shall gauge the self-control necessary for 
fasting such as this? But now Dorcas meetings are 
over, and dances begin again to-morrow. The Easter 
anthem has been sung, and the imported bonnet takes 




A CLUB WINDOW. 



a turn on Fifth Avenue to salute and to hob-nob with 
Broadway imitations during the hour between church 
and lunch. To New Yorkers this Easter Church 
parade is as much of an institution in its Avay as those 
of Hyde Park during the season are to the Londoners. 



346 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

It was plain that the people sauntering leisurely on the 
broad sidewalks, the feminine portion at least, had not 
come out solely for religious exercise in church, but 
had every intention to see and to be seen, especially 
the latter. On my way down, I saw some folks who 
had not been to church, and only wanted to see, so 
stood with faces glued tothe windows of the big clubs, 
looking out at the kaleidoscopic procession : old 
bachelors, I daresay, who hold the opinion that spring 
bonnets, whether imported or home-grown, ought to be 
labeled " dangerous." At all events they were gazing 
as one might gaze at some coveted but out-of-reach 
fruit, and looking as if they dared not face their fasci- 
nating young townswomen in all the splendor of their 
new war paint. A few, perhaps, were married men, 
and this was their quiet protest against fifty-dollar 
hats and five-hundred-dollar gowns. 

The sight was beautiful and one not to be for- 
gotten. . 

In the evening I dined with Colonel Robert G. 
Ingersoll and the members of his family. I noticed 
something which struck me as novel, but as perfectly 
charming. Each man was placed at table by the side 
of his wife, including the host and hostess. This 
custom in the colonel's family circle (I was the only 
guest not belonging to it) is another proof that his 
theories are put into practice in his house. Dinner 
and time vanished with rapidity in that house, where 
everything breathes love and happiness. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

I Mount the Pulpit, and Preach on the Sabbath, 
IN the State of Wisconsin— The Audience is 
Large and Appreciative ; but I probably Fail 
TO Please One of the Congregation. 



Milwaukee, April 21. 

TO a certain extent I am a believer in climatic in- 
fluence, and am inclined to think that Sabbath 
reformers reckon without the British climate when 
they hope to ever see a Britain full of cheerful Chris- 
tians. M. Taine, in his "History of English Litera- 
ture," ascribes the unlovable morality of Puritanism to 
the influence of the British climate. " Pleasure being 
out of question," he says, "under such a sky, the Briton 
gave himself up to this forbidding virtuousness." In 
other words, being unable to be cheerful, he became 
moral. This is not altogether true. Many Britons are 
cheerful who don't look it, many Britons are not moral 
who look it. 

But how would M. Taine explain the existence of 
this same puritanic " morality" which can be found 
under the lovely, clear, bright sky of America? All 
over New England, and indeed in most parts of Am- 
erica, the same Kill-joy, the same gloomy, frowning 
Sabbath-keeper is flourishing, doing his utmost to blot 
the sunshine out of every recurring seventh day. 



348 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



Yet Sabbath-keeping is a Jewish institution that 
has nothing to do with Protestantism ; but there have 
always been Protestants more Protestant than Martin 
Luther, and Christians more Christian than Christ. 

Luther taught that the Sabbath was to be kept, not 
because Moses commanded it, but because Nature 

teaches us the necessity 
of the seventh day's rest. 
He says " If anywhere 
the day is made holy for 
the mere day's sake, 
then I command you to 
work on it, ride on it, 
dance on it, do anything 
that will reprove this en- 
croachment on Christian 
spirit and liberty." 

The old Scotch 
woman, who "did nae 
think the betterer on " 
the Lord for that Sab- 
bath-day walk through 
the cornfield, is not a 
solitary type of Anglo- 
Saxon Christian, But it is when these Puritans judge 
other nations that they are truly great. 

Puritan lack of charity and dread of cheerfulness 
often lead Anglo-Saxon visitors to France to misjudge 
the French mode of spending Sunday. Americans, as 
well as English, err in this matter, as I had occasion 
to find out during my second visit to America. 

I had been lecturing last Saturday evening in the 




PURITAN LACK OF CHEERFULNESS. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 349 

pretty little town of Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and 
received an invitation from a minister to address a 
meeting that was to be held yesterday, Sunday, in the 
largest church of the place to discuss the question, 
" How Sunday should be spent." I at first declined, 
on the ground that it might not be exactly in good 
taste for a foreigner to advise his hosts how to spend 
Sunday. However, when it was suggested that I 
might simply go and tell them how Sunday was spent 
in France, I accepted the task. 

The proceedings opened with prayer and an anthem ; 
and a hymn in praise of the Jewish Sabbath having 
been chosen by the moderator, I thought the case 
looked bad for us French people, and that I was going 
to cut a poor figure. 

The first speaker unwittingly came to my rescue by 
making an onslaught upon the French mode of spend- 
ing the seventh day. " With all due respect to the 
native country of our visitor," said he, " I am bound to 
say that on the one Sunday which I spent in Paris, I 
saw a great deal of low immorality, and I could not 
help coming to the conclusion that this was due to the 
fact of the French not being a Sabbath-keeping peo- 
ple." He wound up with a strong appeal to his 
townsmen to beware of any temptation to relax in 
their observance of the fourth commandment as given 
by Moses. 

I was called upon to speak next. I rose in my pew, 
but was requested to go into the rostrum. 

With alacrity I stepped forward, a little staggered, 
perhaps, at finding myself for the first time in a pulpit, 
but quite ready for the fray. 



35° A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

" I am sorry," said I, " to hear the remarks made by 
the speaker who has just sat down. I cannot, how- 
ever, help thinking that if our friend had spent that 
Sunday in Paris in respectable places, he would have 
been spared the sight of any low immorality. No 
doubt Paris, like every large city in the world, has its 
black spots, and you can easily discover them, if you 
make proper inquiries as to where they are, and if you 
are properly directed. Now, let me ask, where did he 
go ? I should very much like to know. Being an old 
Parisian, I have still in my mind's eye the numerous 
museums that are open free to the people on Sundays. 
One of the most edifying sights in the city is that of 
our peasants and workmen in their clean Sunday 
blouses enjoying themselves with their families, and 
elevating their tastes among our art treasures. Did 
our friend go there ? I know there are places where 
for little money the symphonies of Beethoven and 
other great masters may be and are enjoyed by thou- 
sands every Sunday. Did our friend go there? 
Within easy reach of the people are such places as 
the Bois de Boulogne, the Garden of Acclimation, 
where for fifty centimes a delightful day may be spent 
among the lawns and flower-beds of that Parisian 
"Zoo." Its goat cars, ostrich cars, its camel and ele- 
phant drives make it a paradise for children, and one 
might see whole families there on Sunday afternoons 
in the summer, the parents refreshing their bodies 
with this contact with nature and their hearts with the 
sight of the children's glee. Did our friend go there? 
We even have churches in Paris, churches that are 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 351 

crammed from six o'clock in the morning till one in 
the afternoon with worshipers who go on their knees 
to God. Now, did our friend go to church on that 
Sunday? Well, where did he go ? I am quitting 
Whitewater to-morrow, and I leave it to his townspeo- 
ple to investigate the matter. When I first visited 
New York, stories were told me of strange things to 
be seen there even on a Sunday. Who doubts, I 
repeat, that every great city has its black spots? I 
had no desire to see those of New York, there was so 
much that was better worth my time and attention. 
If our friend, our observing friend, would only have 
done in Paris as I did in New York, he would have 
seen very little low immorality." 

The little encounter at Whitewater was only one 
more illustration of the strange fact that the Anglo- 
Saxon, who is so good in his own country, so constant 
in his attendance at church, is seldom to be seen in a 
sacred edifice abroad, unless, indeed, he has been led 
there by Baedeker. 

And last night, at Whitewater, I went to bed pleased 
with myself, like a man who has fought for his country. 



When I am in France, I often bore my friends with 
advice, and find, as usual, that advice is a luxurious 
gift thoroughly enjoyed by the one who gives it. 

" You don't know how to do these things," I say to 
them ; " in England or in America, they are much 
more intelligent ; they do like this and like that." 
And my friends generally advise me to return to Eng- 



352 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

land or America, where things are so beautifully man- 
aged. 

But, when I am out of France, the old Frenchman is 
all there, and if you pitch into my mother country, I 
stand up ready to fight at a minute's notice. 




CHAPTER XLII. 
The Origin of American Humor and Its Char- 

ACTERISTICS — ThE SaCRED AND THE PROFANE — 

The Germans and American Humor — My 
Corpse Would " Draw," in My Impresario's 
Opinion. 



Madison, Wis., April 22. 

HAVE been lecturing during the past fortnight in 
about twelve places, few of which possessed any 
interest whatever. One of them, however — Cincinnati 
— I was glad to see again. 

This town of Madison is the only one that has really 
struck me as being beautiful. From the hills the scenery 
is perfectly lovely, with its wooded slopes and lakes. 
Through the kindness of Governor Hoard, I have had 
a comprehensive survey of the neighborhood ; for he 
has driven me in his carriage to all the prettiest spots, 
delighting me all the while with his conversation. He 
is one of those Americans whom you may often meet if 
you have a little luck : witty, humorous, hospitable, 
kind-hearted, the very personification of unaffected 
good-fellowship. 

The conversation turned on humor. 

I have always wondered what the origin of American 
humor can be ; where is or was the fountain-head. You 
certainly find humor in England among the cultured 

353 



354 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

classes, but the class of English people who emigrate 
cannot have imported much humor into America. 
Surely Germany and Scandinavia cannot have contrib- 
uted to the fund, either. The Scotch have dry, quiet, 
pawky, unconscious humor; but their influence can 
hardly have been great enough to implant their quaint 
native "wut " in American soil. Again, the Irish bull 
is droll, but scarcely humorous. The Italians, the Hun- 
garians, have never yet, that I am aware of, been sus- 
pected of even latent humor. 

What then, can be the origin of American humor, as 
we know it, with its naive philosophy, its mixture of 
the sacred and the profane, its exaggeration and that 
preposterousness which so completely staggers the 
foreigner, the French and the German especially ? 

The mixing of sacred with profane matter, no doubt, 
originated with the Puritans themselves, and is only 
an outcome of the cheek-by-jowl, next-door-neighbor 
fashion of addressing the Higher Powers, which is so 
common in the Scotch. Many of us have heard of the 
Scotch minister, whom his zeal for the welfare of mis- 
sionaries moved to address Heaven in the following 
manner : " We commend to thy care those missionaries 
whose lives are in danger in the Fiji Islands .... 
which, Thou knowest, are situated in the Pacific Ocean." 
And he is not far removed in our minds from the New 
England pastor, who preached on the well-known text 
of St. Paul, and having read : "All things are possible 
to me," took a five-dollar bill out of his pocket, and 
placing it on the edge of the pulpit, said : " No, Paul, 
that is going too far. I bet you five dollars that you 
can't " But continuing the reading of the text : 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



355 



" Through Christ who strengtheneth me," exclaimed, 
" Ah, that's a very different matter ! " and put back the 
five-dollar bill in his pocket. 

This kind of amalgamation of the sacred and pro- 




THE MISSIONARY AND THE FIJIS. 

fane is constantly confronting one in American soil, 
and has a firm foothold in American humor. 

Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, proprietor of the New 
York Mail and Express, every morning sends to the 
editor a fresh text from the Bible for publication at the 
top of the editorials. One day that text was received, 
but somehow got lost, and by noon was still unfound. 



356 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

I was told that " you should have heard the composi- 
tors' room ring with : ' Where can that d d text 

be?' " Finally the text was wired and duly inserted. 
These men, however, did not intend any religious dis- 
respect. Such a thing was probably as far from their 
minds as it was from the minds of the Puritan preachers 
of old. There are men who swear, as others pray, 
without meaning anything. One is a bad habit, the 
other a good one. 

All that naive philosophy, with which America 
abounds, must, I fancy, be the outcome of hardship en- 
dured by the pioneers of former days, and by the 
Westerner of our own times. 

The element of exaggeration, which is so character- 
istic of American humor, may be explained by the 
rapid success of the Americans and the immensity of 
the continent which they inhabit. Everything is on a 
grand scale, or suggests hugeness. Then negro humor 
is mainly exaggeration, and has no doubt added its 
quota to the compound which, as I said just now, 
completely staggers certain foreigners. 

Governor Hoard was telling me to-day that a Ger- 
man was inclined to be offended with him for saying 
that the Germans, as a rule, were unable to see through 
an American joke, and he invited Governor Hoard to 
try the effect of one upon him. The governor, there- 
upon told him the story of the tree, " out West," which 
was so high that it took two men to see to the top. 
One of them saw as far as he could, then the second 
started from the place where the first stopped see- 
ing, and went on. The recital did not raise the 




' that's a tamnt lie ! " 



358 A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 

ghost of a smile, and Governor Hoard then said to 
the German: "Well, you see, the joke is lost upon 
you ; you can't see American humor." 

"Oh, but," said the German, " that is not humor, 
that's a tarmit lie!" 

And he is still convinced that he can see through an 
American joke. 

Grand Rapids, April 24. 

Have had to-day a lovely, sublime example of that 
preposterousness which so often characterizes Ameri- 
can humor. 

Arrived here this morning from Chicago. At noon, 
the Grand Rapidite who was "bossing the show" 
called upon me at the Morton House, and kindly in- 
quired whether there was anything he could do for 
me. Before leaving, he said: "While I am here, I 
may as well give you the check for to-night's lecture." 

"Just as you please," I said; "but don't you call 
that risky? " 

" What do you mean ? " 

" Well, I may die before the evening." 

" Oh, that's all right," he interrupted. " I'll exhibit 
your corpse ; I guess there will be just as much money 
in it ! " 

Grand Rapids is noted for its furniture manufactor- 
ies. A draughtsman, who is employed to design ar- 
tistic things for the largest of these manufactories, 
kindly showed me over the premises of his employers. 
I was not very surprised to hear that when the vari- 
ous retail houses come to make their yearly selec- 




MY EXHIBITOR. 



^^^B 



360 A FRENCHMAN' IN AMERICA. 

tions, they will not look at any models of the previous 
season, so great is the rage for novelties in every 
branch of industry in this novelty-loving America. 

No sinecure, that draughtsman's position, I can tell 
you. 

Over in Europe, furniture is reckoned by periods. 
Here it is an affair of seasons. 

Very funny to have to order a new sideboard or 
wardrobe, "to be sent home without delay" for fear of 
its being out of date. 






CHAPTER XLIII. 

GooD-BY TO America — Not "Adieu," but "Au 
Revoir " — On Board the "Teutonic" — Home 
Again. 



New York, April 26. 

THE last two days have vanished rapidly in pay- 
ing calls. 

This morning my impresario gave me a farewell 
breakfast at the Everett House. Edmund Clarence 
Stedman was there ; Mark Twain, George Kennan, 
General Horace Porter, General Lloyd Bryce, Richard 
Watson Gilder, and many others sat at table, and 
joined in wishing me bon voyage. 

Good-by, my dear American friends, I shall carry 
away sweet recollections of you, and whether I am re- 
invited in your country or not, I will come again. 

April 27. 

The saloon on board the Teutonic is a mass of 
floral offerings sent by friends to the passengers. 
Two huge beautiful baskets of lilies and roses are 
mine. 

The whistle is heard for the third time. The hands 
are pressed and the faces kissed, and all those who are 
not passengers leave the boat and go and take up posi- 
tion on the wharf to wave their handkerchiefs until the 
'' 361 




TWO BASKETS FOR ME. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



363 



steamer is out of sight. A great many among the 
dense crowd are friendly faces familiar to me. 

The huge construction is set in motion, and gently 
and smoothly glides from the docks to the Hudson 
River. The sun is shining, the weather glorious. 

The faces on land get less and less distinct. For 
the last time I wave my hat. 

Hallo, what is the matter with me ? Upon my 
word, I believe I am sad. I go to the library, and, 




THE "TEUTONIC." 

like a child, seize a dozen sheets of note paper on 
which I write: " Good-by." I will send them to New 
York from Sandy Hook. 

The Teutoyiic is behaving beautifully. We pass 
Sandy Hook. The sea is perfectly calm. Then I 
think of my dear ones at home, and the happiest 
thoughts take the place of my feelings of regret at 
leaving my friends. 

My impresario. Major J. B. Pond, shares a beautiful, 



3^4 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



well-lighted, airy cabin with me. He is coming to 
England to engage Mr. Henry M. Stanley for a lecture 
tour in America next season. 

The company on board is large and choice. In the 




" A FEW DISAPPOINTED STATESMEN.' 



steerage a few disappointed American statesmen re- 
turn to Europe. 

Oh ! that Teutonic ! can any one imagine anything 
more grand, more luxurious? She is going at the rate 
of 450 miles a day. In about five days we shall be at 
Queenstown. 



A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA. 



365 



Liverpool, May 4. 

My most humble apologies are due to the Atlantic 
for libeling that ocean at the beginning of this book. 
For the last six days the sea has been perfectly calm, 
and the trip has been one of pleasure the whole time. 
Here is another crowd on the landing-stage at Liver- 
pool. 

And now, dear reader, excuse me if I leave you. 
You were present at the friendly farewell handshakings 
on the New York side ; but, on this Liverpool quay, I 
see a face that I have not looked upon for five months, 
and having a great deal to say to the owner of it, I 
will politely bow you out first. 




Max O'Rell's Impressions of America and the Americana. 



JONATHAN AND 
Els continent 

BY 

And jack ALLYN 

translated by madame paul blount. 

In One Elegant i2M0 Volume. 

Extra Cloth, Gilt Top, - - Price, $1.50. 
Paper Binding, - - - - * SO cts. 



WHAT THE PRESS SAYS 



" We have laughed with him at our neighbors, and now if we are clever we will 
laugh with him at ourselves." — Daily CraphiCy N. Y. 

" One reads the book with a perpetual smile on one's face, punctuated every 
now and then by a loud laugh, as one follows the brilliant Frenchman through his 
six months' tour of America. * * * He has glanced at things with the eye of 
a trained observer, and commented upon them with originality and humor. * * * 
One lays down the book with a wish that one might know its author." — Chicag* 
News. 

" The sensation of the spring. * * * It will tickle the American in spots 
and make him mad in spots, but it will be read, talked of, and enjoyed." — Homu 
/ournaiy Boston. 

" Undoubtedly the most interesting and sprightly book of the season, ♦ • • 
It U rich in information." — Inter-Ocean, Chicago. 



CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, N. Y. 
9 



" Rarely has one sprung into so immediate a fame in two continents." 

— Boston Home Journal. 

A NEW VOLUME BY MAX O'RELL, 

AUTHOR OF 

JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT. 

JACQUES BONHOMME, 

JOHN BULL ON THE CONTINENT, 
and FROM MY LETTER BOX. 

By MAX O'RELL, 

Author of '' Jonathan and His Continent," ''John Bull, Jr.," etc., etc. 

I vol., i2mo, Paper, 50 cents. Extra Cloth, 75 cents. 



" If any one was absurd enough to feel aggrieved at Max O'Rell's amuse- 
ment over us in ' Jonathan and His Continent,' he may take his revenge 
in 'Jacques Bonhomme,' wherein the light-headed Blouet laughs at his 
compatriots as well."— 77;^ Springfield Republican. 

" The book is full of spriglyily, keen observations .... there is 
not a dull line in it from first to last, and its information is as genuine and 
accurate in the way of glimpses into the more intimate life of the people 
as it is charming in its sparkle and glow of style. — Boston Evening Trav- 
eller. 

" He is a keen observer and has a happy faculty of presenting the comi- 
cal side of things, and that with unvarying good humor, apparently indif- 
ferent whetherthe joke hits himself or somebody else."— r//^ T^-oy Budget. 

" In it is pictured the French at school, at war, in leading strings, in 
love, at work, at play, and at table, in trouble, in England, etc., etc."— 
The Bosto7i Times. 

" Take it all in all, we think the most delightful book that Max O'Rell 
has written is his last published, entitled ' Jacques Bonhomme.'"— iy^*«<« 
fournal, Boston. 

NEW YORK 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue 

^ 30 



JOHN BULU Jr, 

OR 

French as She is Traclucea. 

By max O'RELL, 

author of 
JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT. 

With a Preface by George C. Eggleston. 

Boards, flexible ; price, 50 cents. Cloth, gilt top, unique, 
$r.oo. 

" There is not a page in this delightful little volume that 
does not sparkle." — Phila. Press. ^ 

" One expects Max O'Rell to be distinctively funny. 
He is regarded as a French Mark Twain."— 7"//^ Beacon. 

" The whole theory of education is to be exiraited from 
these humorous sketches." — Baltimore American. 

"A volume which is bubbling over with brightness, and 
is pervaded with wholesome common sense." — A^ Y. Com. 
Advertiser. 

" May be placed among those favored volumes whose 
interest is not exhausted by one perusal, but which may be 
'aken up again with a renewal of the entertainment afforded 
by the first reading." — Boston Gazette. 



CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, New York 



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